So I was this close to getting to sleep at a reasonable hour last night, but then I heard that the Perseid meteor shower was supposed to peak the evening of Aug 11/early morning of Aug 12. I tried to think of the darkest place within a reasonable distance. The Anza-Borrego Desert came to mind, but that was a good two hour drive into the middle of nowhere, so I figured driving through the Temecula Valley on the way to L.A. would suffice.

Unfortunately, as I headed east on the I-8, clouds obscured the sky, and I thought I’d have to go farther inland.

This is probably very obvious, but I just want to say: it’s probably not recommended to look for meteors while you’re driving. The clouds didn’t really break until I got over the mountains. While the mountains were pretty damn dark, you couldn’t really see too much of the sky. Once Highway 78 descended down into the desert and stopped winding so much, the sky just opened up. (My God, it’s full of stars!) Highway 78 is only two lanes, one in each direction, and I imagined this is what crossing the Mojave from San Bernardino to Vegas used to be like before they built the Interstate. I caught a shooting star blaze across the shimmering desert sky. I didn’t meet any cars at all once I left the mountains, which kind of freaked me out and made me think twice about stopping to look up at the sky.

I hit the shore of the Salton Sea sometime after 2 am, and I couldn’t believe it was over 90 degrees. Finally turning northward, I caught another meteor streaking all the way across the sky from east to west before fading out. There were more trucks on Highway 86, heading up from Mexicali. It struck me how many huge casinos now stood in the desert. Highway 86 is four lanes across, two in each direction with a good sized median, almost like an Interstate, except that there’s still cross-traffic. You could see the lights of the towns on the other side of the sea, kind of reminding of the Bay Area.

I finally made it to Interstate 10 at almost 4 am. Sometime before San Bernardino, I caught another bright meteor actually flaring ahead of me then fading out.

Even entering the San Gabriel Valley, I could still see a lot of stars, but by the time I got to Pasadena the fog had rolled in, and it was 30 degrees cooler than the desert. I made it to my parents’ house by 5 am. So much for meteor watching. I might try again tonight though.

(Thumbnails derived from images on SpaceWeather as per fair use provisions of the U.S. copyright law.)

I woke up this morning just before dawn, and on the way to McCarran International, I was treated to the sight of Venus and Jupiter almost touching. Is an omen? A harbinger of luck?

In any case, it was pretty sight. Even in Vegas, the sky can surprise you.

For some strange reason, I wake up at 1:45 am. My eyes are gooey and difficult to open because I fell asleep with my contacts in. I gaze outside my windowsill, and there's the full moon gleaming down upon me, and I remember that today, there's supposed to be a lunar eclipse.

So naturally the first place I go is to my computer, and I immediately Google "lunar eclipse" and find out it's like starting in 10 minutes. Restless, and realizing that it would probably be futile to try and get back to sleep at this juncture, I head outside, intending only to get the box of bottled water I left in the trunk of my car, and maybe to get a glance at the beginning of the eclipse.

I walk past my cute neighbor's window on my way to my car, and I see that she's still awake watching TV, but I walk on by and tiptoe slowly down the stairs. Over the fence, there's a couple already outside, waiting for the celestial event to commence.

I experiment idly with my camera which I knew would be incapable of capturing any sort of image from the sky. I finally figure out how to change the shutter speed on it, but this is of little consequence.

MSNBC, incidentally, popped up as the first news site on Google, with an article talking about the lunar eclipse. NASA has a detailed site that describes what to expect from the event. (As I type this, the moon as now leaving the Earth's umbra.) I had read about the [turquoise fringing caused by ozone in the Earth's atmosphere scattering light onto the moon] and was gratified to see them.

With lack of anything better to do, I hop in my car, hoping to find somewhere dark enough to get a better look at the sky.

The great thing about San Diego is that it doesn't take very much to leave the city limits. In less than 20 minutes, I find myself on a rural highway heading to the sleepy little town of Jamul. I end up turning down some godforsaken side road, now facing the prominent San Miguel Mountain, where it is very dark indeed, but unfortunately, there aren't any turnoffs. Eventually, I am faced with a sign reading "Pavement Ends." But that's never stopped me before, and sure enough, the asphalt turns into dirt. But as the road curves, I am greeted by the highbeams of an SUV. Damn. Law enforcement. (Sorry, it's my reflex as a person of color.) Or maybe INS?However, I grow at ease as they don't turn on any sirens and in fact turn off their lights entirely, which actually freaks me out more, and I'm wondering if they're dealing drugs or trying to rid of some bodies. So I turn around.

I go back to the main road, but instead of heading home, I continue east on the way to Dulzura, but before I get there, I decide to head back west on Otay Lakes Rd. On my left (to the south) is bright light emanating from behind a mountain, and I'm wondering, is it dawn already? But then I remember that that's where the state prison is, right before you get to the U.S.-Mexico border.

At this point, the moon looks like my dog had gotten a piece of it. It's still too bright to really appreciate how red the shadowed part is (and it probably doesn't help that I'm red-green color blind.) I start passing a few parked cars of people who are watching the eclipse. Despite the glaring lights of the state prison, it's actually nice and dark enough to see quite a few stars, even. But unfortunately, they've taken up all the nice turnouts where I'd be willing to stop, and eventually I find myself unceremoniously dumped into the middle of that existential limbo known as suburbia. Defeated, I decide that it's probably for the best that I head back home.