A nice meteor on 1/31

Jan 30/31 '06 clear sky

NOAA 8[ #83-022A] left a tumbling trail (>) on the left while M-5 R/b [06041B] flared brightest marked (>>)

Timing of x1 flash ( bottom 2 flashes in above image) duration derived from video time stamp in the second term is 39:109-26.828=12.281 seconds for the 83-022A.

pedestal needed

FengYun 1C FY-1C debris

China kill vehicle destroyed FengYun 1C - an old polar orbit weather sat and created swarms of space debris. The cataloged entries move across our morning sky 5am-6am . They are faint 6+-7+ magnitudes. Note the apparent parallel tracks. You can just make out the Crux on the lower right hand corner.

86-019AG flashes in Centaurus 1/22/2007 am

While warming up to prepare to watch Fengyun 1C debris.. I lost myself and ended up bagging this fast flasher 86-019AG in 75mm f1.4 using watec-902H2Ultimate. PPAS database indicate s a single entry (reproduced below).

Designtn   Date    Time     Obsr Durtn Acc Num  Per   Remarks
86- 19AG 97-11-13 18:32:05.7 RE                 3

The actual flash patterns look complex.. a quick series of twinking to max brightness
and dim down.. ( click the image to have a close look).  Video on archive.

Skymap Plot showing the south-bound debris and the general star field
( larger than the 75mm lens).

slow meteor pass through Columba - Dove

I was reading a book on Darwin when i noticed 'activity' on my screen. A slow meteor just pass through the tiny constellation of Columba - the dove.

C/2006 P1 ... I need a clear sky

Comet McNaught was is a 'day' event reported on Sunday onwards.... and see the incredicle actual light curve here . This is my first time I bring along my 10 x50s, camera tripod and a small digicamera S3 Canon plus the orientation chart a AM and PM plot of comet-sun configuration to work today. But the sky was cloudy and transparency sucks...


How often do you have a chance to view a celestrial object during the the day ? Discounting the obvious sun and moon of course. A comet !!! during noon!!! Even for Venus I only tackled that once from Mt Victoria, Wellington, NZ in deep blue sky 1979 naked eye.

Whatever you do please be careful, dont look into the Sun nearby.

Comet C/2006 P1 McNaught

This Singapore Western horizon around 1/13 7:15pm with Sun just below the horizon. Positions plot of the C/2006 P1 is shown over the rest of the month. Comet is low in the horizon. Use Venus as a guide and sweep this region with a high power pairs of binocular to aid in finding the comet. ( FOR SAFETY do not do this if sun is above horizon)

Meteor Jan 6/7

Great mass of clouds and a tiny near- vertical meteor
detected on the little clear patch of sky left on lower right corner

With clouds rolling past - i centred the 12mm f1.4 lens on the brightest star- Canopus in SE around 8:00pm. After some time i shifted FOV and I immediately saw a quick succession of tracking boxes - tell tale signs a moving object was preceding it. It was a meteor around 8:30pm. Soon more clouds closing in. A meteor zapped past near Crux the Southern Cross.

However in between there were clear patches. VideoLM was +4.9. Then a little while later a short 'tadpole' size meteor caught my attention. On AVI playback, it looked like a falling water droplet filmed in slow motion - i saw the beginning thin 'line' developed and slowly break off from the front teardrop mass. I set my alarm at 4:30am so that if the pc for some reason hung up again at least i can restart the UFOprogram. I woke up and recentred the FOV again, Another meteor right inside the Crux

the pc didnt hang (yet) and from then till 6:48am the system detected several meteors with rising Southern Cross as backdrop. While the pc is doing its meteor detection i was reading Peter Raby's biography on "Afred Russel Wallace - A Life " and I finished the book around 8:00am and went back to sleep. Now i know Wallace a little better than the famous demarcating Wallace's line. There was an entry that he saw Pole Star near the horizon in his Amazon adventure. I counted 14 meteors in total - didnt bother with plotting since no significant showers members expected.

my first Meteor in 2007

I left the video system on with a 12 mm f1.4 video lens and the new watec 902H2 Ultimate ( Hi-gain). My first meteor of 2007 (above) soon appear after midnight. The bright star in the lower is Canopus and tau Puppis [mag 2.94] at 10 o'clk position.

The prime reason of getting this watec model is to get a deeper LM penetration and I am happy that the noise level is pretty low even at this HI-GC setting).

Old vs New ( watec 902H vs 902H2Ultimate)

Wat-902H2(Ultimate) [2= 1/2" 3=1/3" ccd]
S$480.00

Note the Medium-Low-High Gain control on the new watec on the right.

Frontal view
Left: Watec-902H2, Right: Watec-902H