I am somewhat envious of Queen guitarist Brian May. I am envious not of his axe-wielding abilities or his ridiculous poodle haircut, I am envious of his knowledge of astronomy.

Last night my house played host to the First Annual Perseid Meteor Shower Barbecue, where myself and Joe gathered a selection of fine wines and jolly meats and set up camp in my back garden to watch the Perseid meteors fall to earth. Knowing not the first thing about astronomy, we prepared for our little endeavour by downloading various confusing star maps and used Google Earth to work out the direction in which my back garden pointed (it points North-West, orientation fans) so we could orientate our garden chairs for optimum viewing.

This is a typical star map:

“Simple!” we said, “Look at the sky, find Mars (which will be in the North), go right a bit (North-East), find the Perseus constellation and there you’ll find the source of the meteors!”

Having seen various science fiction movies we knew that the planet Mars was red in appearance, so we scanned the sky for the crimson glow of our nearest solar neighbour and found it hovering conveniently above my back garden. Pleased that our little knowledge had proved so beneficial, we pointed our garden chairs towards Mars, popped open a bottle of wine and waited patiently for the cosmic light show to begin. An hour later with not one meteor having streaked by us, we remembered that Google Earth had proved my garden pointed North-West, so we may not have actually found Mars.

It was at this point we realised we really needed the wisdom of Brian May.

Brian May - wise

We scanned the star maps again, cross-referenced Google Earth and randomly looked up at the sky only to discover that we had indeed not found Mars; the real Mars was located in the East of the sky and was positioned to the right of my garden, inconveniently obscured from our vision by a huge tree. Now certain that we had found the source of the Perseid meteors, we re-positioned our garden chairs to point North-East, we refilled our wine glasses, threw a Cumberland Sausage on the barbecue and waited for the astral light show to begin…

At the stroke of 21:30 a meteor sped across the night sky. It was directly above us travelling in a South-Westerly direction, nowhere near where we were looking. As time progressed and the intensity of meteors increased we soon came to realise that our preparations were all in vain; these meteors were going to appear wherever they liked and were not going to abide by the parameters set out by our star map. I pictured Brian May sat in his huge nuclear-powered telescope, watching the meteors fall to earth with pin-point precision whilst we two stood in my garden, lolloping our heads around randomly trying to catch a glimpse of a possible meteor.

At 02:00 this morning I was still out in the garden, neck craned upwards as I scoured the sky for more falling rocks. The night sky was beautiful – above me the galactic plane of The Milky Way slowly passed overhead with billions of stars made visible thanks to the clear skies and new moon, satellites passed by completing yet another orbit of the Earth whilst stars twinkled a rainbow of colours as our atmosphere tainted the light of several million millennia ago. The meteors continued to fall, some bright with long dusty tails and some just faint orange streaks punctuating the darkness; all of them seemed somewhat magical. It was a sight to behold.

As the embers of the barbecue slowly fizzled away and the cold of the night began to set in, I wished that Brian May had been there. He could’ve serenaded the cosmic ballet as it danced its way across the night’s sky, his poodle mane flowing in the cosmic winds as his guitar power chords reverberated across the endless reaches of the galaxy; The Sky at Night with leather trousers and a six-string.

Although there is Patrick Moore who plays the Xylophone and is also a bit mad. He would’ve been much more fun.

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