For once the weather behaved itself for the annual Perseid meteor shower with clear skies all round for much of the night.

The route to the Archery Green - our usual venue for this star party - deviated from the norm with access onto the field blocked by a locked bollard. This was expected, but a cunning alternative parking location meant that the equipment only had to carried 30 or 40 meters from the side of the ‘pitch and putt’ anyway.

The event itself proved to be better than average with regard to actual numbers of Perseids spotted. People were delighted to catch a glimpse or fully observe several bright examples before skies were even fully dark.

A sighting the the ISS caused some excitement, bang on predicted time.

By 23:30h nearly all had drifted away, but Andi, Andy, John L, Mark and Warren stayed on a while and saw some real corkers: one brilliant Perseid left an ionized trail which was visible for several seconds afterwards.

Around midnight almost one a minute was spotted, so the overall number seen whilst there must have been over 40, possibly 50 in a 2-3 hours observing session. Not at all bad!