Sunday, January 07, 2007

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

yk, those are fantastic images! Keep up the good work. After seeing what the Watec 902H2 Ultimate is capable of I'm seriously thinking of picking up one of the cameras here in the states.

Currently I'm using the PC164 and PC165 cameras and have had very good success. I also use the integrating camera sold in the states by Adirondak Astronomy, StellacamII (Watec 120). However, I haven't had very good success on capturing meteors when integrating 128 frames.

Keep everyone posted on the differences you see between the 902H and the 902H2U. If I'm like other people, I'm sure there is interest on hearing your thoughts about these great cameras for capturing meteors.
Finding good and current resources on the internet is hard to find.

If you'd like to see what I've been able to do with my capturing take a look at my blog: http://tempestsfuries.blogspot.com/

It's mostly ramblings of astronomy, books, and meteors. I enjoy capturing meteor imagery, but lately the winter skies where I'm located are not cooperating.

Dark Matter said...

Hi Ron:

Thnks and you have interesting stuff on your blog too...
I need clear sky to test out further.. will update then..

rgds
yK

Anonymous said...

hello darkmatter
could you so kindly help me find the new comet c2006x1 they say its visible to the naked eye, and its somewhere near the orion constelation..any info on this would be appreciated
joesaz@bellsouth.net

Locations of visitors to this page