OMG! A Meteor Shower!

Were you awake for the Leonid meteor shower this morning? Well, we were! At around 3 a.m., FlyBy dispatched a correspondent to witness what we'd heard would be "one of the biggest meteor shower events of our lifetimes." Find out what we saw, after the jump.

Upon arriving, we decided to join a group camped out in the middle of the Quad lawn. Jeremy S. Cushman '12, a friendly physics concentrator, became our unofficial astronomy expert. After 20 minutes passed with zero meteor sightings, we started to worry that we were looking for the wrong thing. But Cushman (who had seen two by this point) reassured us. "You'll know," he said. "You'll know you've seen a meteor when you've seen a meteor."

Meanwhile, other groups began to appear on the lawn. By 3:30 a.m., about 50 people had showed up--including three guys who had taken the shuttle from Winthrop. In response the Quadlings' extremely vocal disbelief, one of them said, "It's not that far, guys." (Actually...yes, it is. Especially for an early morning meteor shower.)

One nearby group was growing increasingly bitter about how difficult it was to see the meteors. "This is so disappointing," one guy said. "Yeah," another agreed. "The Facebook event had a sick picture."

We eventually did see one meteor, but it was extremely faint and short-lived. We're told that this is the way most meteors appear, especially when there's so much light pollution. So was it worth it? Honestly, we're too tired to tell. Now we just want to sleep.