Bloody Moon stuffs the Perseids Tonight is the night for the best view of the Perseids – the annual meteor shower caused by the debris trail of comet Swift-Tuttle. Or rather it would be if it weren't for the bloody Moon, which has timed its near-fullness to perfection to "interfere significantly" with the chances of copping a decent view of the lightshow. …
Luckily the moon doesn't affect radio reflections from meteors (strictly speaking the plasma trail from meteors) so if you cannot see much of the night sky you still might take a 'listen' for Perseids...
If you have an FM radio and an outside aerial facing north east through to south east and tune to a quiet part at the bottom of the band (around 87.5-88MHz) you may be able to hear "bursts" of foreign radio stations lasting from a fraction of a second up to 20-30 seconds or so...
Mike
but I would hazard a guess that its simple physics.
Radio waves radiate off into the atmosphere where they (having no object to block them) float away into the ether.
When a comet is there, you get a solid object in place (for a moment) for the signals across the globe to bounce off of.
just a guess though
I wouldn't for a moment suggest that's a pointless exercise, but these days listening to foreign radio stations is pretty easy using the interwebs. If you need to do it whilst on the move, I have an app called ootunes on my jesus phone which enables me to listen to thousands of radio stations from around the planet, including some pleasingly weird (to me) spoken word stuff from Japan.
Wouldn't that be great? Free world-wide radio! Now, if only we could have a meteor storm that lasts long enough... Can you imagine the bandwidth you would be saving for people listening to internet radios?
I think you missed the point there, sir. But that was probably the point of your post anyways :-)
First I'm going to try what you've already said, tune in to the bottom of Band II. Don't be tempted to try the upper part of that band, meteor's work better the lower the frequency and the burts last longer.
I've also picked up a cheap £15 radio which supports Band I (50-88Mhz) so might try that - there are some stations actually broadcasting around the 69MHz range (BBC R2 strangely) so trying to figure out a good spot might be tricky.
Another alternative is online: http://www.meteorscan.com/meteor-live.html has a 24hr display of radio meteor detections
It's the method I remember from years ago of communicating by over-the-horizon microwave to offshore oil rigs. In their case, chuck shedloads of RF in their general direction, there'll be enough particles floating about to establish a connection.
Remember building a specialised noise measuring tool to test the connnection for this when I was at BT.
In roughly most-to-least likely order
1) It will occur during daytime
2) It won't be visible in this hemisphere/latitude
3) It'll be cloudy - as usual
4) The full moon will obscure it
5) Light pollution will render it invisible (unless you live in the wilds of Scotland/Wales, then see #3)
6) It'll be the night of your child's school play (they're in the lead role)
7) You'll be stuck underground/in a basement/in jail
8) You'll be looking in the wrong place
9) Or on the wrong night
10) You'll be struck blind just prior to the event
11) You'll forget to take your sunglasses off and miss it all
12) It coincides with Armageddon and you're too busy worrying about that.
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