The Shower

On 12th of August I decided to join my ex-classmates of Unpad HI 2003 to witness a Meteor Shower. It’s the Perseid Meteor Shower they said. Don’t know what Perseid really means tho. It started with a long journey from Depok to Bandung and Bandung to Lembang, and additional walks along the local settlements before we finally reached the camping site.

We set 3 camps, which neither of which is fully occupied as all of us were out watching the stars. We lay ourselves on the ground and watch the constellations moving westward as the night coming forth. It was not as dark as I expected, a nice city lights of Bandung shone the night a bit. It wasn’t that bright it would have blocked our view on the sky.

the first meteor entered, not all of us saw it, it was a flash, not so bright, it was only a short line of white narrow light in the sky. then afterwards, more and more meteors entered earth. Mostly small. Few are magnificent. some of the few are even more magnificent. I got to see for the first time in my life a very long red-dust tailed meteor crossing the sky from North sky all the way to the South on naked eye. WOW. and few other long tailed meteors. They were far more exciting than watching the fireworks.

As the night coming forth It was about ‘valid’ or "not valid". More meteors kept coming and we’ve kinda lost the excitements. So, the rule came to: do not comment on small meteors and it is not valid if you only see it yourself. According to the news the peak hours would be after 2 am. so most of us didn’t sleep until then. We expected to see a RAIN of METEOR, but apperently a meteor shower means a rapid occurrence of meteor entering earth’s surface. so according to us the rain hadn’t actually happened as we didn’t see any Rain of meteor, but we had actually experienced it, well, not to those who decided to sleep after only few occurrence. not me. I overslept after 2. and woke up at three, but apparently, the chilling cold wind was getting cooler and i decided to go in. some of us stayed up till morning and said the rain never happened but the occurrence was very rapid after 4, it was once every minute he said, and some are the good ones. However I wasn’t really disappointied as i already witnessed the good one before and I Thank God for that.

8.13.07 / 11pm