Catch a Falling Star

A couple of nights ago, there was a meteor shower. Perhaps you heard about it on the news?

No, it wasn't a simulated meteor shower at the Clark (or any other) Planetarium; it was a real one. You know, above us - in the sky. In space.

Okay, so I don't know what all of the scientific terms for it are. Science has never been my forte, and I have never been scientifically inclined in any way, shape, or form.

(My eighth-grade science project, for crying out loud, was a cookie taste test. Really. Somehow, I passed Earth Science.)

What I do know is that on this past Thursday night, Mother Nature put on a heckuva great show in the nighttime sky - my first meteor shower. She did not disappoint one bit. It was well worth any of the sleep that I may have lost. (In fact, this may have been of the rare moments in which insomnia has been on my side.)

I saw enough shooting stars and/or meteors that, after a while, I lost track of the count. And I got to enjoy it all with some good company, to boot.

Good things are worth waiting for.

Great Balls of Fire!

Late last night or early this morning, depending on how you look at things, I was working on the computer when crash! bam! alakazam! a very bright light shined in the sky to the west, lighting up everything I could see outside of my window for about two or three seconds, after which everything went dark again.

My initial thought was that another refinery in Woods Cross had exploded. That was followed by a thought - and it was not an altogether unpleasant one - that Las Vegas had been incinerated by a nuclear explosion and that Harrison Ford would soon come bouncing down my street in a lead-lined refrigerator.

Then, this morning, I learned that what I saw was actually caused by a meteor that landed somewhere in the western desert of Utah or the eastern desert of Nevada.

By now, this is old news if you live here along the Wasatch Front, but for the benefit of any readers outside of that sphere - assuming I still have any - it was pretty dang cool.