While camping at Wright’s Lake, we saw several night sky shows, natural and man-made.
Tuesday morning everyone except Ellie piled out of our tents at 4 am and went down to the pier to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. The display was not quite as spectacular as last year -- I think the best viewing would have been a couple hours earlier, but the moon was too high and bright this year -- but we saw about 20 meteors while we stood around for 45 minutes or so. Several of them were quite spectacular and left a glowing trail in the sky, but most were quick and faint.
Tuesday night we noticed bizarre green lights flashing all over the lake surface from our campfire, so the kids and I abandoned our s’mores (temporarily) to investigate.
There was an extended family from another campsite down on the pier, and the uncle had two bright green lasers he was using to make a light show. He told us they were very dangerous -- he bought them in China, because it is illegal to sell (but not buy!) them here in the U.S. He claimed they are so bright that they can burn your eye and cause blindness in 1/100th of a second!
He then showed us how he can point out astronomical features in the night sky -- he pointed out Jupiter, and showed us Andromeda -- and then did another short laser show, flashing the lasers over the surface of the lake (wonder how many blind fish are in there now?) and up into the sky. It was really neat, although not quite as amazing as the Perseids.
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