Catching Shoot Star ( Meteor) my way

In this muvee created using Canon S3 and virtualdub.. you will have a glimpse of my system setup for the video stuff...a day view and then a night view followed by one latest example of a bright -6 or brighter meteor passing through the FOV Field of Vision. I used my palm T3 to get a rough fix of the star background and used the Azimuth and Altitude at my geographical location and timing as INPUT for me to get the star-chart matchup in Sonotaco's UFOAnalyser. From then on a typical meteors stream analysis is a breeze.. In the video towards the end you will see a UFOCapture screen where i pointed (on left hand top) the RAs/Decs position that corresponds to the bright meteor... Have fun view the video.

Video of a slow meteor in 25mm watec902H2Utimate

This is the video of meteor in one post below. Original is 50Mb. Too bad the software cutoff is 1 second after the event. I believe the persistent train should be much longer.... Cheers!

Big slow flash in the sky! - A meteor!

A few frames coadded in IRIS

Composite look of the slow meteor

Centaur R/B 75-091B

A flashing object passed by Gamma Grus

I happened to notice the flash on the tiny b/w monitor 5:20am..
i hit the record button
( luckily i have 60+Gb space for continuous full frame recording.. Skymap plot ( first image) revealed this flasher ID : 75-091B

ETA ( peak) may 07 '07 - halley comet's debris

At least 9 ETA were detected

May 5 2007 - ETA detected 25mm /wat-902H2 ultimate

The bright region on the upper left is from the moon. Streaks are meteors. Only 4-5 of these are ETA - caused by debris shedded from Halley's Comet

A 25mm camera centred near the Sagittarius - moon was nearby.

Lyrids - post peak Apr 23 am

A day after peak, my adhoc system outside of the window detected 3 lyrids in the rather narrow 25mm lens. The image is a costacks of three Lyrids, the lower thin one is at 03:47:39am, the two fireball at 06:06:05, 06:17: 23 - pretty close to each other in location... the same phenomena seen during Apr 22 peak dawn.

Nova V1280 in Sco ( near Epsilon Sco)

Easy target even in 25mm lens. Nova V1280 add another star to triangle asterism.
A meteor flashed by seconds later.

Showing the position of the Nova w.r.t to Sco Tail.


A 75mm lens
I noticed a flash of a satellite glint
and hit the rec button.
I missed the bright flash but managed
to register the sat's dim cyclic trails. SL-8 R/B 98-072c
was in the vicinity. ( timing deadon but track parallel shifted..)

IRS-P2 (94-068A) bright flash near Sco

The video system logged two frames with single flash each. It was 94-068A or IRS-P2

Meteor near Antares

Dawn was approaching fast... and a nice meteor flashed near Antares

Atlas Centaur R 81-119B flashing in CMa

Clouds were drifting in and out of FOV, the bright flares of the 81-119B tripped the video detection and left 3 frames. A composite co-added frames reproduced above showing the 'saturn' like images.

EGP again - see the groups of flashes - analysis added

What is the duration of the 3 flashes? I sampled a few ( two shown here) using Limovie and obtained the similar timing using PAL frame rate. 30 frames duration or 30x4/100 or 1.2 seconds. The peak height correspond to the brightness. Next will be those odd filler - continuous blocks of ~6 flashes.

Another pass of EGP tonite. Click the images and find the variations of group of flashes. The common 3s, and the long blocks with very close timings. EGP - the disco-ball - check out this image .

2/17'07 CNY eve - H-2A RB or 2001-038B

A flashing (H-2A RB 01-038B?) leaves behind a strings of x4 'saturn'- like trace.
flash duration from bottom frame up 5.891, 16.640, 5.797 s.

mentally rotate the image file to match this plot.

Noss 3-3 or r 05-004B

NOSS 3-3 r ( 05-004B) left a ribbon-like footprint as it slowly brighten and dim out and the cycle repeated.

NOAA 8 , EGP and a meteor in Canis Major

Disco ball in the sky - old friend again - EGP!

The meteor traveled from right to left.
Note the thin luminous start point on the right.

NOAA 8 again . When i saw this tumbling satellite I hit the rec and shortly it vanished from view ... 7 seconds were lost (t3) before i hit next record again. Complete sequence should be t1, t2, (t3), t4 above. Note the single short flash at #2 (~mag 3+) and (~mag+4 ) at #1 and #4

a couple of bright meteors Feb 012 am hrs

Feb 9/10 '06 - A flashing sat & meteors in around Crux

I saw a crawing dim UNID sat on LCD and hit the record button. Never realise at the same time another satellite was transiting at the same time.

See whether you can spot the x1 flash from Atlas Centaur R # 85-055B near alpa Lupus
Time in SGP time (+UT)

A couple of meteors in and around Crux...

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