sir patrick bloody moore indeed

Entirely by chance I passed by the television last night when a News24 presenter was speaking to Patrick Moore. Hearing the words "Leonids" I started paying attention to see when they would be now that I have a barely-halfway-decent camera with which to attempt capturing them. Something about 04:45 was mentioned so this morning I left my nice warm bed at 4am and trundled up the hill with a flask of coffee, a mini-tripod, lots of layers and a couple of rusks. Managed to spot three or four reasonable trails with my eyes but unfortunately didn't get anything except stars and exposure-blurred clouds on camera. I'd even checked to see where the hell Leo was in relation to one fo the two constellations I can consistently identify. Rather than the quoted "two to thwee a minute, myarrh, although of course that.. may vaghwy.." the rate was about two per hour unless it was all go during the brief moments of cloud cover.
As the sky looked to be clearing up towards dawn I stuck around the hill for a bit to get some long-exposure shots of Dunsapie Loch, trundled around a bit more, answered "yes" and pointed at the nearby summit to some students who asked "is this Arthur's Seat?", glared at a bloke upsetting the peace by yapping into his phone then trundled upwards briefly when the sun popped out. Didn't notice until poking through them on the computer that I'd caught that wind farm off to the south on the skyline.
Not tired yet but I'll be off to sleep as soon as Planet Earth has finished. I don't want to go on about it but it really is quite rewarding being up nice and early. Especially when there is no sunlight between clock-in and clock-out for the next five days. Except Wednesday when I have a day off.