I have read somewhere that the best/easiest way to watch meteor showers is to li
ID: 2288491 • Letter: I
Question
I have read somewhere that the best/easiest way to watch meteor showers is to lie on the ground or other horizontal surface with your feet oriented towards the "apparent point of origin" (what was that called again?) of the shower and just relax while having eyes open to the heavens.
Last November I actually tried this method to watch the Leonids and I did see some nice meteors where I have not really consciously seen any before. (Which was probably because I had not watched a meteor shower before purposefully, I guess.)
Is this really the best way for amateurs to watch a meteor shower with the naked eye? What might be other/better ways? How about when you use binoculars? Or would that just limit your field of vision, making you be better of to just use eyes alone?
Explanation / Answer
The only way to observe a meteor shower is naked eye. Any optical instrument will limit your field of view, and you will miss most of the meteors.
The location of the radiant in the sky has no bearing on where you will see meteors. People don't need to worry about exactly where the radiant is. Meteors can occur anywhere in the sky. If you look towards the radiant, the trails will be shorter; the longest trails are about 90