Meteor 'above' Moon May 30 2010

Meteor 'above' moon.

Another one close to moon

 A tiny but bright meteor on the lower left..

Two tiny sprite above the time stamp 02:20:45..

 Another upward spray of lightning (sprite) above the time stamp..

Commercial Jet - Contrails @ night

A slow passing Jet left a bright string of flashing lights. In this 5 minutes exposure a  previous jet's single contrail was ribbon-ed and broaden by upper atmosphere lateral air flow with surprising pretty uniformity. Its less chaotic than i thought.

May 23 2010 Spos

-2.3 Magnitude SPO with another dimmer one

Three meteors ( all Sporadics) from above stacked frames. They all 'appeared' to come from the same radiant with the exception of the short one ( path length requirement).  2 trajectories so one backward projection intersect point ( RA 352.5 Dec=-42.3)...hmmm.
The 3 dotted stars on the mid right were Antares (SCO). VIDEO here

May sky.. a couple of SPO - a nice x1 posted

a -1.3 mag sporadic ( SPO) 0:51am Sunday May 16 '10

Cloudy in the last few nites, so the moment i saw Crux and Pointers around 11:30pm Sat night i put out my system. Not expecting much activities - May is a quiet month. Bright and/or SPO is the target.  The hunt continues

 

Couldn resist - another post of x1 SPO, this is brighter at -1.6

A good example of the benefit of using video. Imagine you are exposing using film, how do you know the background stars at time of exposure? In the video set up i always started with a few shots with background stars as reference... what if the sky was cloudy when i started the session?  Then the second best thing is to enable the software to take a frame at certain interval e.g every 15 minutes. So say the sky clears up when you sleep.. the sampling will capture those ( as well as other bright fast moving objects). All the above is NOT a problem if you system is permanently mounted ( i.e fixed azimuth, elevation) - you only do the background ONCE!  It still works for me in ad-hoc mode after all these years!! Video uploaded here.

Eta Aquarids May 7 2010 - bright ones in 5am-6am slot

 ( 5am - 6am) the captions should says 3,8mm f0,8 lens

See the negative magnitude eta Aquarids above!! video of these five here.

05:22:37 (-02), UT May 6 21:22

05:25:26(-1.4),UT May 6 21:25

05:32:49(-0.8),UT May 6 21:32

05:33:32(-2.0), UT May 6 21:33

05:55:35(-1.5). These are located in or near Sagittarius / Scorpion region. One overlay map plot below

6am - 6:30m ( above)

Before the Moon enter the video lens FOV ( 04 am- 5:00am slot)

 For comparison - you are invited to check out last year Orionids captured using the same setup. 

Orionids ( November)  and Eta Aquarids( May)  with similar parent body - Halley's Comet.

 

Eta Aquarid ( Halley's comet Debris ) may 6 2010 & iridium 33 flashes ( after collision with cosmos 2251)

Posting individual frames showing the verified eta Aquarids in reverse timestamps order. If not for the automated detection system i doubt any one will bother to waste sleep on week day night to watch this shower with lunar light interference

 

A eta aquarid grazer.

BONUS visitor :  Iridium 33 bright flashes after collision ( collided with Cosmos 2251 in 2009 Feb 10@ 1655UT over Siberia). Instead of total annihilation, the big piece of wreckage* still harbor the reflecting surface (MMA or solar panel that give rise to intense flashes) see in the above image. One tiny flash follow by a big one. *verified by ground level telescope imaging. Video of above flash.

Eta Aquarids May 5 am hours

Eta aquarids ( debris from Halleys' Comet )  streak through the moon lit sky.

03:42,04:53, 06:10, 06:23. ( .. its 3.8mm f0.8 lens, wrong caption in video)

Its 3:22 am... lets go nite flying in the moon light

Iridium Flare Outside my window - negative 5 magnitude

 

Found that there is a -5 mag iridium flare today and the evening weather looked promising.  In the distance kites were dotting the early evening southern horizon. But this iridium is @ high elevation and the azimuth is a bit hard to reach from my usual location. I pulled out the analog sony camcorder, fired up one still working lithium battery and i set up the video /tripod in the other window. Using the camcorder large LCD as montor i star hop from the compact trapezium of Corvus to expected flare location @ hydra. I replaced the camcorder with the USB-PC video cable and watch the pc screen running UFOcapture. My watch was synchronised to singtel time annoucement ($0.30 per call 1711). The Iridium Satellite came on time and the i hit the rec button...Watch the uploaded video Iridium 37 here

Eta Aquarid and glaring moon

A meteor originated close to the over saturated moon. The star near the meteor is antares (SCO).
Post processing of the meteors reveal x1 spo x3 etaAq - including the one above.

Just a day ago I had  x3 sporadics SPO  and x1 etaAq. Increasing rate?

Labour Day May 1 early am meteors and glaring moon

A composite showing three meteors with the glaring moon(s). The trumpet-shapes on the lower left are reflections from the aspheric lens