Stargazing

This weekend DS and I drove down to WV to visit his grandparents.  We know we won't be able to travel for Christmas or Thanksgiving this year since I'm not supposed to get out of easy range of the hospital after 24 weeks.  His mom and aunt also came up, so it a nice little family gathering.

The weather was fantastic, especially coming from all the upper 90's we've been having here.  I actually wore pants and got chilly at night.  We slept with the windows open.  It was also the peak weekend of the Perseid Meteor Shower, and WV is probably the most perfect place to watch stars on the east side of the US.

Saturday afternoon we hiked up Bickle Knob.  There's a fire tower at the top, and it's a lovely place to enjoy the landscape.  Honestly, it's not much of a hike.  You drive most of the way up.  But you can't beat the view, especially in the fall.  I was impressed with my ability to climb up all the stairs of the tower.  Anything remotely cardio is a lot harder these days, it's kind of depressing.

DS and I at the top of the fire tower on Bickle Knob.

That night we went back up to view the meteor shower.  Some of them were really bright and amazing.  We didn't stay out late enough for them to really get going, but I'm still really excited with the amount we did see.  I've never lived anywhere before where I could see a meteor shower, so that was awesome.

It's pretty difficult to photograph actual meteors.  There's not a lot of light, and they're not in the sky for very long.  But DS was able to take some cool photos of the sky with a long exposure.  The lines you're seeing are the paths of the stars across the sky as the earth rotates during the exposure.  The lines get smaller in the upper left corner because it was center of the rotation.  Pretty cool huh?

Long exposure of the sky over WV on Aug 11, 2012.

So we had a pretty great weekend.  The food was good, the company was good.  One of his grandmothers even gave us two handmade quilts her friend made for the babies.  She also gave us a wrapped gift "for the shower" that we're not allowed to open yet :)  Now if his other grandmother could just feel better, things would be perfect.