Meteor shower
By ET
The Perseids Meteor shower comes every year, beginning in late July and stretching into August. Sky watchers outdoors at the right time can see colorful fireballs, occasional outbursts and, almost always, long hours of gracefully streaking meteors. Among the many nights of the shower, there is always one night that is best. This year: August 12th.
The source of the shower is Comet Swift-Tuttle. (Isn’t the name of the ghost gardener in the movie “The Others” Tuttle?)
And there’s a bonus: Mars. In the constellation Aries, right beside Perseus, Mars is shining like a bright red star. Step outside before sunrise, look east, and you’ll find you have a hard time taking your eyes off Mars. There’s something bewitching about it, maybe the red color or perhaps the fact that it doesn’t twinkle like a true star. It’s steady. You stare at Mars and it stares right back.
Picture this: It’s four in the morning. The sky is dark. The breeze is pleasant. Mars is beaming down from the east while meteors flit across the sky.
I’m always fascinated by the beauty of heavenly bodies. When I was young, a favorite place to go is Beijing Star Observatory. They have some machine to beam light dots to a dome that simulates the night sky. (iMax seems to have a similar machine, but it is unfortunately used for a rather naive laser show accompanying U2 music).
I still remember a summer going to the sea side town “Bei Dai He” with a few classmates. Corn and I spent two hours catching meteors, and to my big surprise, we found almost 20. It was in mid June, I remember this because we went their without taking some preparation class sessions for the college entrance exam (which took place in early July). Cost to me: I got punished by the teacher such that I could not go to Fudan University without taking the entrance exam. But it turned out trivial, because I took the exam and went to Tsinghua. 
