sprite

Crux and Sprite March 18

moon and meteor

A meteor against lunar illuminated sea of clouds

A night with 75mm /Watec out of my window Feb 6 09

Uars transversing the FOV - see HA map below

Map courtesy of Heavens-above.com

I manually shifted the FOV and a tumbling object
with varying brightness transversed the field.

I glanced at the HA list of >4.5 mag satellite
and noticed one coming up - a rocket body
so i expect a tumbling signature and reposition.
True enough the it dimmed and gradually brighten leaving
a 'drawn-out' brightness envelope. While parking the lens's FOV at Orion - ' Dagger' region, a jet flew by
(Map courtesy of Heavens-above.com)

snapshot mode from within UFOCapture
creating a 4 Z-frames from avi and IRIS add_max2 stacked

Then i went out to field to look at the real stars
Moon and Gem's Castor Pollux .. clouds drifted in making a haloed moon - Regulus - Saturn towards the east ( Comet Lulin should be in Cancer...). Big patches of clear sky and in the SE - the 'False Cross' rising
When i returned I glanced at monitor - the automatic video detection
bagged one random meteor and another short 'line' created by a flaring satellite

spot the 'sprite' Feb 26 '09

Can you spot the column-like sprites in these two images?

OR watch the jpg2AVI here.

Feb 21 '09

Southern Cross ( Crux vs Crux)

Courtesy of AP

Was reading Tuesday 11/2/2009 Strait Times and saw this article about Tekapo, NZ. Lovely milky way against a church. The dark nebula - coal sack was plainly visible and if you look carefully, you will appreciate AP photographer had the Southern Crux vs the Crucifix in mind.

Southern Hemisphere folks seeing Northern constellation the other way round. ( mirror image) from the northern counterpart. eg Orion belt slants the other way..

Penumbral Lunar Eclipse Feb 09 on Yuan xia night

Visually it is difficult to see the penumbral eclipse. But in camcorder LCD the 'lighter' earth's shadow is readily seen.

First Day of CNY and here is an exception - a day event

Its first day of CNY as usual we visited our mother-in-law in the morning and i had plenty of time to burn....

Checking my inventory : Annular eclipse in few hours time. What can i do? Need solar filter and either digital camera or video. I have a cumbersome old russian 300 mm lens and a Thousand Oak C5 filter.

I took out a shoe-box and cut some strips to line the outside of the lens hood - a few minutes later the C5 solar filter seated properly on the lens hood.
I need a color ccd - get the Jaguar Mintron, fish out a Sony Handy cam for recording. I need a easy to use digital camera - the recent addition CP P5100 fit the bill. Batteries need charging... Guide or unguided? The hardly used Orion Teletrack couldnt handle the heavy lens + ccd..pointing at steep elevation angles so I switch to camera tripod and a 2-axis slow motion... ( works all the time for comets too). I am set.... Then my brother and family came.




Sunlight getting into my hall. The dryer was the best platform for my camcorder while the 300mm lens+ solar filter faced the sun.

Close to 4:30pm the encroaching shadow-caster - moon created a bite of the sun, breaking the perfect circular 'spotless' geometry.

The bite get larger and larger as I continue outside the corridor then .. the clouds came and blinking light from the draining Lithium battery... oh well. Time to pack up and perhaps some other lucky folks can imagine a better one else where.

Using the same tools - UFOCapture V2.. i yanked out a couple of still shots and tested re installation of another USB Capture external device - Yuan's TV2Go.

P/s the camcorder time was 15 minutes faster..

It will be interesting to have set up a portable tracker and just leave the video on or another digital camera with lightweight filter in front for interval shooting .. perhaps next time.
This is another USB video capture board tested to work in UFOCaptureV2.
" When you have only a hammer... every problem look like a nail to you ....."

2009-Jan-20-22:42:35

Meteor near Canopus. Note Sirius at top.

small but bright

'Tear Drop' Meteor Again Jan 03 '09

.. and the brief event video

Moon(- 9.7) and venus (mag-4.3) in early evening for magnitude comparison

Unknown Object - firework or meteor?

Is this a single stray from 'firework' that masquerade as a meteor ? ( 0:12 hr)
Watch the the video just posted there. ( The little sparkle at the end of the video gave the true ID away- firework as all of you have correctly pointed out)

A Slow meteor with flaring along the ablation path

A slow moving meteor around 9:15pm crossing the sky created a 'arrow'-shaped image above. CLICK ( to have a closer look) at the image to see the 'sudden increase in brightness' along the luminous flaring path.

Meteors - a dozen Dec 18/19 2008

Better sky condition.. Sirius and Canopus 'arced' in the exposure. The bunching revealed more meteors in early am. 6/12 detected in 04-05 am local time,

Geminids 2008 Dec 13/14 - Cloudy sky but.

I thought this year the Gems will be a washout judging from the strings of cloudy sky and rain. Dec 13 saw Venus and the feeble Jupiter in the cloudy sky early evening. So decided to put out my video ccd and let the recorder do all the work.

22:09 first Gem appeared follow by another at 22:30. The composite frames below illustrate the changing apparent radiant as earth rotates bring the constellations across the sky from east to west.

Gems 'cascade' down from the sky. Note a nice terminal flash from a meteor parallel to the TV antennae near the roof. Canopus traced a short arc on lower left - the # dots corresponds to the number of frames stacked in add_max2 command in IRIS.

Meteor 2008 Dec 13 Tally and Time in UT.

14-15 UT count: 1
15-16 UT count: 5
16-17 UT count: 2
17-18 UT count: 3
18-19 UT count: 2
19-20 UT count: 3
20-21 UT count: 3


1. Dec 13 14:09:58

2. 143059
3. 151405
4. 152827
5. 155239
6. 155950
7. 155954
8. 162717
9. 175657
10.184730
11. 185717
12. 190904
13. 195122
14. 195133
15. 200951
16. 202846
17. 203012

choper's path

nov 27 late nite meteor

Seeing a slight improvement in the sky condition, i put out the video lens. A slow meteor was caught before midnite. ( the tiny trail at the opposite end was created by a plane.)

a nice fireball in wide FOV