Watec 902H interior Exposed!

My main workhorse for Meteor/Satellite - Video -This camera showed sign of usage, the plastic housing for the 12V in broke and AVI connection seemed intermittent. After opening the case found a broken/ solder due to cold solder on one of the two leads ( marked 'X') for the Video IN jack. A quick touch-up with a soldering iron fixed it.

73P fragments chart Apr 30 - Early May 06

Chart showing Comet 73P fragments streaming pass the keystone in recent days.
I generated this via Minor Planet Ephemeris Service and stick in in my Skymap
CLICK to see detail From the right are fragment C,B,G,R

Meteor April 29/30 06...

Return of meteors... on a moonfree night.

While the video was doing its stuff automatically, I walked to the nearby park 1:00am to have a position fix on 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 fragmet 'c'. Using the orange red star -Arcturus as starting point - i hopped ( in 7x50s bino) to the reversed 'C' shaped Corona Borealis - and jumped to the Keystone of Hercules. It should be there .... The next trip I will bring my video gear.

(Top) Composite veiw of the x10 meteors detected, ( Bottom) a few frames showing the bright meteor resulting in a 'string-of-pearls' appearance. CLICK image to see larger version

Meteor April 27/28 '06

Meteor 4 20 AM '06

A stack from all meteors big and tiny... including a bird trail that coincided in time with one of the meteors' appearance.

Meteors April 07

Meteor April 3/4

Return of the meteors..

83-113A or DMSPB5D2-2

Object: DMSPB5D2-2/83113A
31 March '06 6:01:32-56 Two bright dots were found on adjacent peakhold images. Watch the video ( ~2.7Mb). 1st flash( 20h41m29s, -41.32, 06:01:32 )2nd flash (20d32m33s, -35.75, 06:01:53). Coordinates determined using UFOAnalyser with reference to a star field frame 5 hrs ago. Skymap run confirmed the id. Note the large solar panel in this image. In 2004 I encountered this object while running unattended Mark's Skypatrol4ccd.