Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

07—You can see a meteor on any night of the year if you get lucky, but it’s in the showers that you have a much higher chance of seeing something.

Anita Cochran is the assistant director at the McDonald Observatory. Dark skies are necessary to view meteors.

10—The most important thing for watching meteors is to get to dark skies. These things are not super bright. In order to see it, you probably want to be in the second half of the night because the moon will be up for the beginning.

There are more than twelve annual meteor showers, with the Orionids coming up on October 21st – but Cochran believes star gazers should leave city limits to view them.

11—Some cities have regions where you can get away from the light. Many of the larger cities in Texas, there’s really no place you can go to get away from the significant amount of light and so you’d be much better off going out into the country.

Cochran claims you won’t regret the trip.

14—A good meteor shower is something that very much worth going out and seeing because it’s kind of fun to see these things go shooting through the sky. It’s always more fun to go with people and everyone is sitting there “Oh! Look at that one!” “Oh, look at that one!” And so if you get a chance to see a good meteor shower, it’s worth doing.

Want to see more meteors? The Leonids appear the night of November 16, and the Geminids fill the night sky December 12&13.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.