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Gems ( Geminids) Meteors Finally Dec 15 2007

Dec 14 2007 Period : 224648_225246. Gems started with radiant ~23 degree
Vertical streaks of a slowly drifting jet contrails can be seen in mid frame

Shortly after midnight - Gems streaking outside my South facing window.
Visually they are just pretty - yellow-greenish spearheaded fast scurry across the sky.
Period1215_002509 to 1215_003622

Geminids Meteors 'Spray' - 2007 Dec 14/15
Early hours : Period Dec 15 04:19:17 - 06:03:15 total 12 (9 shown above)
Canopus left a series of dots in the stacked frames

After midnight - I stood at my south facing window and gazed out - the familar yellowish/green Gems streaking from radiant at the back of this window. The 6mm watec902H2U video system was left to do its work. Earlier on 10:08 at a park nearby my first Gem was a long length - spearheaded Gems ...
Situated at the tip of the malaya peninsula - SGP weather map around 4:40am - SGP relatively clear but menacing clouds from west of Sumatra means move clouds cover later....

shooting stars zip past familar star fields Cns Major

Meteor bright enough to be detected through clouds
'K' field in Canis Major - OneTwo...

Three!

Video of the meteor on early hrs of Dec 8 2007

Passage of a bright Meteor

03:56 Dec 08 2007 - With patience they will come...

A flashing ( tumbling) satellite across cloudy sky -CBERS 1

CORRECTION* - using stars from both reference 99-057A is a better match.

PPAS entries : 99- 57 A 07-11-30 18:21:53.6 AR  164.6 0.3   8 20.57  F'aaaF'; +2(5.5)->inv; 11)

First frame exhibit two bright flashes.. it was very cloudy and surprised this tumbling sat creeping from the clouds


I repositioned the lens further 'upstream' and caught the other flashing series in 2nd image below ( faint stars provide references)

Comet Holmes again Dec 3 2007

3rd Dec 2007 - 8:15-8:30pm

10x70 - detect nothing , a thin layer of clouds obscure the comet
75mm lens + watec 902H - the patch ( non circular by now) is readily seen
300 mm + mintron - too diffuse noisy image

Comet 17P/ Holmes -updated Nov 21 '07

NEA's weather satellite map - is the sky clearing up

Holmes Nov 21 2007 - near alpha Perseus ~ 10:20pm

The setup on Nov 11 2007. Sony Camcorder DCR-TRV820E+Russian Lens+Mintron CCD
The 25mm lens( electonic finder) is optically parallel to the 300mm lens

Nov 11 2007 - 10:45pm +ve and -ve view ( below) 300/f2.8 Mintron
The Comet nows had better defined condensation surrounded by circular halo region still.

Nov 10 Saturday 2007 - 10pm.Midnite chart - note the Mars in Gemini

25mm/ Watec902H2UltimateCCD showing the non-stellar-like comet taken from common staircase

This is one of the brightest comets i have ever seen in binoculars. Don't miss this one of the blue moon chance of viewing it. Even thought there are reports you can see it in naked eyes ( dark sky) but you really need minimum optical aids - binoculars to appreciate it better. The comet will be in Perseus vicinity till Feb 2008.

Resources:

a) Comet 17P/2007 brightness ( magnitude) chart etc etc at Seiichi Yoshida's excellent website
b) Excellent example of this Comet Imagery from the web
- Michael Jager's 17P Nov 4 2007

Singapore Observation

Nov 4 2007 Sunday - 4:00am Woke up and find the sky full of stars... just when i put out my video gear i realised why not check out the NE Sky for Comet 17P/Holmes. I grabbed my 7x50s binos walked to the common staircase and pointed at the yellow-orange alpha Perseus. The comet appeared as a rather large and pretty bright circular patch! Even the thin veil of clouds wont stop this bright comet!


Nov 5 2007 Monday - 9:45pm Found the rising Perseus and Comet 17P shinning through clouds. Soon the sky got heavily overcasted.

Nov 11 2007 11:00pm - Comet visible in 7x50s easily despite clouds. Testing using the 300mm/f2.8 russian lens with mintron.

Nov 19 2007 10-11:30pm - No See - Waiting for the clouds to go away. Found alpha perseus but the just cannot detect the 'jelly-fish' comet near the orange star in 7 x50s.

Leonids is coming...

2007 Leonids

23:00 UT 18/11 or

Singapore time 7:00am 19/11 Monday* . Go and watch pre dawn hours!!! if weather permit

ZHR rate chart here


Predicitions from Maslov, Jenniskens, Vaubaillon and Asher

What a search beam!

I selected a few of the bright beams from the helicopter and created this montage.


A Meteor zipped past M7 & Scorpion's tail

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