Moon, mosquitoes and meteors.
Many bites, few shooting stars.
That is what I later wrote in my journal about our Perseid night at Pilsum Lighthouse. It felt like the most accurate summary of the evening.
On August 12, I met up with some fellow astronomy club members near the famous Pilsum Lighthouse. We wanted to watch the Perseid meteor shower hoping to catch a few bright shooting stars above the coastal landscape.
We were not the only ones with that idea. A few other people had also come to try their luck under the summer sky. It was a warm night and at first, it felt like a lovely little stargazing adventure. Then reality joined us: The Moon was very bright, washing out much of the sky. The Pilsum Lighthouse was illuminated as well, which looked beautiful but did not exactly help with meteor watching. And the mosquitoes were clearly calling it a feast. Luckily, one of our club members had brought mosquito repellent which I gladly took after the first few bites.
We did see a few Perseids, but not nearly as many as we had hoped for. Most of the fainter meteors disappeared in the bright moonlit sky. I also took some photos, but they turned out rather unspectacular. Around 2 a.m. we finally packed and went home. But I came home with a story: a glowing lighthouse, a bright Moon, a few shooting stars and good company.
Later, I used a photo taken by one of my astronomy friends as inspiration and painted the scene in acrylic in my journal. The painting became my way of preserving the memory. Not as a perfect meteor shower observation, but as it actually felt: warm, bright, slightly itchy and still somehow beautiful.
