We had near perfect conditions in Freeland MD for the peak of the Quadrantids meteor shower on the morning of Jan 4th, 2012. Here is a composite image containing 6 Quadrantid meteors captured between 2 and 4 am EDT.

Quadrantid Meteor Shower - January 4th, 2012

I had a multitude of cameras setup to capture the show including: 2 DSLRs, 3 security cameras and a new Orion all sky camera. I’m glad I had a wide variety of instruments because some didn’t work at all and others worked better at some things and worse at others. It was my first night using the all sky camera and I’m disappointed to admit that it captured ZERO meteors. I’m hoping I had a error in my operation. One of my DSLRs filled up the memory card after only 2 hours and I didn’t realize it till the morning. By far the security cameras picked up the most meteors, totaling 53. I found that most of these meteors were detected between 2-5 am. I also captured the most meteors in the southern skies at low elevations.

Here’s a compilation video of all the meteors captured on the security cameras.

While reviewing the DSLR photos I was disappointed to find most of the meteors caught on the security cameras did not get caught on the DSLR. The DSLR only captured about 8 meteors total, compared to 53 on the security cameras, so clearly the DSLR lens is not catching everything. I did find this nice fireball that left a persistent train that last for a few minutes. Here’s a full zoom image.

Quadrantid Meteor - January 4th, 2012

Here’s a single exposure that caught two meteors within a 30 second period. This DSLR exposure was also caught on video and both meteors happened at the same exact time! I repeated the sequence 3 times in the video.

Double Quandrantid Meteors - CLICK TO ENLARGE

Overall, a strong performance for the Quadrantids IMO and a very great way to start 2012!

Last night was the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. I setup my camera around 8:00 PM and photographed continuously through the night. The sky was clear until about 2:00 am and then covered with clouds for the rest of the evening. I was able to catch a total of 11 meteors in that 6 hour window. That’s pretty good considering there was a near full moon for most of the evening.

Here’s my final composite holding 7 of the best images from the night.

Composite of Geminid Meteor Shower - Dec 13th, 2011

I used a Canon 5d Mark II camera with a fisheye 15 MM 1:2.8 lens. The extra large CCD inside the mark II used with the fish eye lens allows you to capture the whole sky. This really improves your odds of catching meteors! Here’s another Geminid meteor pic which shows the field of view through this system.

Geminid Meteor - December 13th, 2011

A very large asteroid, 2005YU55 passed by Earth Tuesday November 8th . It reached its peak closeness around 6:30 PM that evening. I made an attempt at photographing it, but failed due to technical reasons. I later found a post explaining the procedure I needed to execute and I was able to successful target, track and photograph the asteroid the following night.

Here’s a short animated gif of the asteroid while it is being tracked. The asteroid is the little dot in the center and the long lines moving are stars. Each exposure is 30 seconds long. The asteroid was only a few degrees from the near full moon and it was also pretty cloudy, so the image is hurt by this, but hey, the asteroid is still there!

Near Earth Asteroid 2005 YU55 - November 9th, 2011

Here is a youtube version of the asteroid sequence above, but just with more frames.

Here’s another animated gif of the asteroid. This time the stars are being tracked, so they are stationary as the asteroid flies across the field of view. Each frame in this clip is a one minute exposure.

Near Earth Asteroid 2005 YU55 - November 9th, 2011

Here is a youtube version of the asteroid sequence above, but just with more frames.

Both of these videos were taken November 9th, 2011 between 8 and 10 PM EST using an RCOS 14.5 telescope.

If you are searching for information on the 11/11/11 meteor, you don’t need to worry about 2005YU55. Its gone and won’t be impacting Earth anytime soon.

Here’s a good article about the asteroid with a map of its path relative to Earth and also a 3d video close-up of the asteroid obtained using a radio telescope.

http://news.discovery.com/space/nasa-makes-a-movie-asteroid-2005-yu55-in-radar-111109.html

and here’s a pretty good Australian news program about this asteroid and NEOs in general.

My wife Tracy and I just back from a nine day trip to Europe. We went primarily to photograph the peak of the Draconid meteor shower which was predicted to be abnormally high this year. Unfortunately, the skies over Europe were blocked out with clouds for seven of the nine days we were there, including both nights of the peak. This was ok though, because our secondary mission was to have a good time, and we did do that.

We stayed at a 5 star mountain resort in Greece located in the mountains above Delphi. The first night we arrived, after traveling for over 20 hours I was immensely tired, but the skies were perfectly clear and beautiful and dark and I had to take advantage (i’m glad I did, as this was our only clear night!). Here’s a two minute exposure taken from the deck off of our room after the moon set.

Milkway over Parnassos Mountains - Arachova Greece - October 7th, 2011

The next day we scouted out possible locations to observe the meteor shower including the ancient Greek city and ruins. Here are a few shots from some of our potential locations.

Parnasso Mountains

Road to Delphi

Sanctuary of Apollo

The Sanctuary of Athena, as seen from Apollo’s ruins

Sanctuary of Athena - Delphi Greece

Here are a few more pics of the ruins…

Apollo Temple

Sanctuary of Apollo

Treasury of the Athenians

I explained to Babis Taglis, the owner of our awesome Greek resort, what I was trying to do and he offered to drive around with me and show me some good locations to shoot from. He put a lot of thought into it and took me to some awesome spots. We literally drove to the top of the Parnasso mountain 6200+ feet up!

Babis Taglis - Tagli Resort & Spa

There was a service road to the top made of mostly softball sized rocks with the occasional bowling ball boulder in the middle of the road! At certain points I thought the car was going to flip backward. I pushed the rented Mercedes SUV to the limit. The car barely worked in ‘auto’ mode and continued to stall out trying to get up the hill, but when I put it into dedicated 4×4 it worked pretty good. Here are a few pics from the peak of the mountain.

Parnasso Mountain Peak

Both nights of the Draconid meteor shower were completely clouded out.

Ancient Greek Church

But I did see this cool falling rocks sign…

Falling Rocks - Delphi Greece

We were without power for 3-4 days this week due to hurricane Irene. The power outage coincided with the new moon phase leaving the skies in northern Maryland darker than I have ever seen before. I was a little bummed that I couldn’t fire up the observatory, so I made the most of it and took some tripod shots of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Here’s a lucky shot of a bright meteor, low on the horizon. Based on the elevation angle of 8º and assuming a 80km starting point for illuminated flight, this meteor would have been about 569km SE of my location or half the distance between Maryland and Bermuda.

Milky Way Galaxy and Meteor - August 28, 2011 11:28 PM EST

Here’s the meteor at full zoom resolution. At a magnitude of 2.0, the bright star directly above the meteor is Diphda.

Milky Way Galaxy and Meteor - August 28, 2011 11:28 PM EST

Here’s another shot of the Milky Way Galaxy from the backyard.

Milky Way Galaxy - August 2011

The power went out early sunday morning. I finally got a generator on Tuesday. The first thing plugged into the generator was my observatory. I was happy to learn that all equipment and PC fired up and operated perfectly on the generator power.

Milky Way Galaxy from Freeland Observatory - August 2011

We were happy to get our power turned back on Wednesday night. Many thanks to all of the utility workers from around the country who came to the east coast to fix our power lines. You guys are much appreciated! I’m hoping hurricane Katia will be a dud or misses us.

I recently attended a NASA meteor workshop at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in Western North Carolina. The workshop consisted of two days of talks put on by the world’s foremost meteor scientists. The talks centered around meteors and video cameras and all sky camera networks and topics relating to the operation and analysis of meteors using different types of cameras and software. There were some VERY cool advanced technologies showcased at this event. I was invited to speak and gave two presentations. The first presentation was about the recent work my company did for the AMS website and the second was an update on the Mason Dixon Meteor hunt. Both presentations were well received and I got a lot of new pointers and ideas that will recharge the meteorite hunt. It was really great to meet the upper echelon of the meteor community and I consider it a privilege being invited to such an exclusive event.

Here is a PDF of the workshop program which contains an agenda and abstracts of each presentation.

Here are the slides from my power point presentation.

For the MDM hunt update I used The Official Page of the Mason Dixon Meteor, as I guide for my presentation.

Here are a few astro photos I took from the PARI site.

NASA Meteor Workshop, PARI NC - August 3rd 2011

Nestled inside the Shenandoah Mountains, PARI has very nice dark skies.

NASA Meteor Workshop, PARI NC - August 3rd 2011

Allowing for a prominent Milky Way.

NASA Meteor Workshop, PARI NC - August 3rd, 2011

Here’s a picasa photo gallery with a few more pics from the trip.

And a time lapse video of all photos taken over the three days.

I imaged the Perseid Meteor Shower three nights this week capturing an average of four meteors each night. Here are the best two from the peak night. Both are fairly large, bright and long.

Perseid Meteor High Res - August 12th, 2011

I think this one may be a small fireball. You can see Cassiopeia in the shot for reference.

Perseid Meteor - August 12th, 2011

Some light cloud cover rolled in but it wasn’t enough to block this Perseid .

Perseid Meteor - August 12th, 2011

Here’s the full sized picture:

Perseid Meteor - August 12th, 2011

The north east was graced with yet another fireball early yesterday morning. Witnesses from Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland all reported seeing a bright green fireball in the sky at approximately 5:15 AM EST.

The AMS received over 40 witness reports. The initial run through my plotting software was a bit confusing. This is what all of the plotted witness reports look like: (red icon means movement left to right; green icon means movement right to left; green line is starting point, yellow line is ending point)

Green Fireball - February 23rd, 2011

At first glance, this looks to be a tricky fireball. Usually the green and red icons will delineate the flight path pretty well, but in this instance, the green and red icons, don’t help make much sense of the flight path.

One of the biggest challenges with making sense of the witness reports is eliminating the noise (or bad reports). For big events (and small ones) there are always reports that conflict with each other, so its a bit of an art to determine which reports are good and which are bad. To help combat this, I recently added a field to the AMS fireball report form called observer experience. The purpose of the field is for the witness to rate his or her observing experience — 1 = no experience and 5 = very experienced.

I made some changes to the plotting software today so I could filter the witnesses by their level of experience. Here is what the witnesses with observing experience of 2 or higher looks like:

Green Fireball - February 23rd, 2011

Things are starting to shape up a bit, but lets see what the plot looks like with only level 3 observers and higher:

February 23, 2011 - Green Fireball

Now it looks like we have a clear ending point. To determine this we try to find a common intersection among all of the yellow lines.

The flight path, is still a bit unclear to me, but there are two reports on the western side of the track that indicate “Up To Down” movement. This generally means the witnesses’ field of view is usually parallel to the meteors flight path and the meteor is moving away from the witness. For this reason they do not see side-to-side movement. Because of this, my initial estimate is West to East movement, starting in Michigan flying over Lake Ontario and ending on the Pennsylvania-New York border near Addison, Lawrenceville and Horseheads New York.

February 23rd, 2011 - Green Fireball - Possible Drop Zone

A daytime fireball seen today from Philadelphia, New York City, New Jersey and other parts of the east coast turned heads and made waves. Over 20 AMS reports were filed within an hour of the fall and almost all of them put the space rock somewhere in the Atlantic.

The image below represents the plotting of the witness reports received by the AMS website in the first hour of this fall. 20+ reports in 1 hour for a daytime fireball, means this was a significant meteor event. The red person icon means the witness saw the meteor traveling left to right. The green icon means the person saw the meteor traveling right to left. The green line is the direction the witness first saw the fireball. The yellow line is where they last saw it. The red line is my ‘quick guess’ at the path of this fireball based on early reports.

Philly Fireball - Febuary 14, 2011 12:40 PM

If you witnessed this spectacular event, please leave a comment and tell us what you saw. Also please report the fireball to the AMS.

UPDATE 2/14/2011 – 8:23 PM –  Reports keep coming into the AMS. We have had over 50 already making this a heavily sighted event. I updated the above plot with the latest reports.

Marc Fries thinks he found the meteor on doppler radar. Here’s what he had to say:

I think I may have found it on radar.  The radar data is noisy on all the radars in range, but there is one feature that appears in the 1736 UTC data set of the KDIX radar outside Philly.  It features multiple altitude signals and a Doppler velocity pair (i.e. turbulence).  Location is 40.19498, -73.6645.  If it is a meteorite signature then it is roughly the size of the Grimsby fall.

Two words: Scuba gear.  Or two other words: Fishy Squisher.

The AMS Fireball logs for this event have been published.

Update 2/15/2011 – Radar Images

Marc Fries of Radar Meteorites sent me these 3D radar images of a possible hit of yesterday’s fireball.

KDIX 20110214 1736

KDIX 20110214 1736-SRV

This is what Marc had to say about the radar data:

This was the product of a quick 15-minute data exam before I had to take my son to his doctor’s appointment.  I’ve looked a bit more and there are a few interesting items in there that I would suggest as search targets if this were over land, but this is the only one that features both multi-sweep returns and observed turbulence.  The first image is a reflectivity image – note how freakin’ noisy the data is.  I don’t know why but all the radars in view are seeing this.  It might be multi-bounce returns from high waves, if there happens to be high winds running at the time.  The second image is the Doppler measurement.  Note the paired towards (green) and away from (red) the radar values.  This indicates that there was turbulence in that region. Both of these features show up in known meteorite falls, although there is currently nothing that is 100% accurate indicator of a meteorite fall.  Still, this feature is roughly in the time and space indicated by your data.

I went looking through the Nexrad files myself to poke around and found this bright return in one of the views. Its pretty close to the red arrow in the trajectory estimate based on witness reports. If this were the meteor (big if), then there would be a possibility of meteorites on Long Island, possibly between Levittown and East Massapequa.

Possible Meteor on Doppler Radar

Update 2/15/2011 – Over 230 observations of the NYC February 14th have been submitted to the AMS website making 2/14/11 NYC/Philly Meteor the 2nd most reported meteor of all time. Second only to The Wisconsin Meteor of 2010. There is still time to beat out WI, which holds the record at 323 witness reports. If you witnessed this meteor, please report it to the AMS.

Update 2/16/2011 – Bill Cooke from NASA’s meteoroid office sent me the results from his analysis of infrasound data which enables him to estimate the total energy and total mass of the meteor. This is what Bill had to say:

We did pick up this event at the Bermuda station, with the back azimuth consistent with the doppler radar as reported by Mark Fries. Energy estimate is ~10 tons TNT, which equates to ~0.9 m diameter rock, with a mass of about 850 kg. A bit lower than my initial guesstimate, but I did not have the infrasound available then.

Update 2/17/2011 00:23 – I received this interesting comment and image from Peter.

I looked at one of the 1736 images from the DIX radar…definately the meteoroid. Lots of echos, some indicating hard targets and also a trail of smoke returns. I have an image, but don’t know how to load it to this site. I would not rule out some iron landing on Long Island.


Possible Meteor Radar Signal Over Long Island

Bob Lunsford from the American Meteor Society sent out this email today to the meteor observing mailing list:

The American Meteor Society has received 39 reports of seven separate fireball events over North America on January 19th. Two of these were widely seen events. Both of these events occurred near 21:00 EST. The first occurred  over the northern Midwest and southern Canada. There is some wide scattered timing of this event and the possibility exists that this may be more than one fireball. The second occurred over the southeastern states and was seen from Florida north to North Carolina. There is good
agreement for the timing plus it seems to been a bit brighter with a majority of those reporting that the peak brightness exceeded that of the full moon.

For more details please visit the AMS website at:
http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball2/public.php?start_date=2011-01-19&end_date=2011-01-19&state=&event_id=&submit=Find+Reports

Refer to reports 83 and 86.

Clear Skies!

Robert Lunsford
American Meteor Society

Dirk Ross from Toyko tipped me off to an increase in meteor activity on January 10th, 2011. Since that time there has been at least 7 significant fireball events in the US alone. If you pay attention to the reports, stories and witness accounts you will see that subsequent fireballs are being observed after the main event. This is a recurring theme with several of these events. There is not much support in the community for the NEO theory being the reason for the increase. There is also not a consensus that there even is an increase in activity to begin with. I believe the multiple events reported yesterday in conjunction with all of the recent big fireballs we have been having is potential evidence for a new meteor stream or some other phenomena.

Reports are now coming in from North Carolina and Georgia about a large green meteor that just came down. The reported times are between 20:50 – 21:00 EST.

From Charlotte, NC

it was really cool ball of green glow. my husband thought it was a firework left over from new years but there was no sound but a big ball of green glowing something with a glowing trail

from Burlington, NC

I was driving in my truck talking with a friend. We had the windows rolled up and the heater fan on. I didn\’t hear anything from outside the vehicle.
General_Remarks = I was driving towrds work on Forestdale Dr between the Forestdale apartments and the K-Mart. Through the windsheild I saw a very bright fireball with a tail streaking across the sky. I lost sight very quickly when it went down behind trees/buildings.

Charlotte, NC

This happened on a very clear night, and it was an amazing sight. The best shooting star I have ever witnessed. It was so bright and large that I was waiting for an impact!

Could this be more evidence of a new meteor stream? Approaching asteroids? Solar grazing comets? Inquiring and paranoid minds want to know….

If you witnessed this event, please report it to the American Meteor Society and also leave a comment here or email me.

I’ve been wanting to post an update about each of the meteors that have fallen recently, but because there have been so many I don’t have time to give each the attention it deserves, so I’ve decided to do a multi-meteor-update. In this update I will include AMS meteor plots and any other publicly available information on the following falls: 12/28/10 – PA, 12/29/10 – PA, 1/08/11 – Mississippi and 1/12/11 - Minnesota.  I consider these falls to be significant because they were seen from multiple states and the number of ams reported witnesses is in the top percentile of reported falls.

Additionally each of these falls is curious from the stand point that the timing is so close to each other. Reason tells us that sporadic meteor falls are random unrelated events and there is nothing linking a fall today in Pennsylvania to a fall tomorrow in Mississippi, HOWEVER, the sheer random coincidence of time and space for all of these events is at the very least odd. Further more several of these falls were accompanied with reports of subsequent falls in the same locations shortly there after — meaning multiple meteors falls.  There is not enough data here to make any conclusions, but I’ve been keeping close tabs on the large meteor fall rates over the last 2 years and the last 2-3 weeks has been heavy in meteor falls IMO.

12/28/2010 - Pennsylvania

2010/12/28 - PA Fireball

AMS Event ID: 929
Time: 16:45
Videos: York Water Company Security Video
AMS Witness Reports: 155
Sonic Boom Reported: Yes
Additional Information: Second largest reported fall of 2010. Wisconsin was the first.
Estimated Fall Area: Lancaster, PA
Possibility For Meteorites on the Ground: 80%

12/29/2010 - Pennsylvania

2010-12-29 / PA Fireball

AMS Event ID: 935
Time: 18:30
Videos: None
AMS Witness Reports: 30
Sonic Boom Reported: No
Additional Information:
Estimated Fall Area: Unknown
Possibility For Meteorites on the Ground: 50%

1/11/11 – Mississippi

2010/01/11 - Mississippi Fireball

AMS Event ID: 52
Time: 21:45
Videos: Trailer Park Video
AMS Witness Reports: 61
Sonic Boom Reported: Yes
Additional Information:
Estimated Fall Area: Southern Mississippi
Possibility For Meteorites on the Ground: 90%

1/12/2011 – Minnesota

01/12/2011 - Minnesota Fireball

AMS Event ID: 53
Time: 18:30
Videos: None
AMS Witness Reports: 21
Sonic Boom Reported:
Additional Information:
Estimated Fall Area:
Possibility For Meteorites on the Ground: 50%

There was a good conversation on the meteor observing list today regarding the ‘perceived increase in fireball activity’. The conclusion from all participants was there was no link to the recent fireballs and the passing of near Earth asteroids. Most agreed there was also no reason to conclude we are even experiencing an increase in fireballs anyway.

Carl Hergenrother, a NEO researcher, explained there is no correlation to witnessed fireball activity on Earth and NEOs that are reported in close approach to Earth, because, these reported NEOs are only a small subset of the actual NEOs flying by everyday anyway.

My understanding of what Chris Peterson of Cloudbait Observatory said is — sometimes fireball rates are going to go up and sometimes they are going to go down and that is just the way it is. Rates will ebb and flow, and correlating a
perceived increase in fireball rates for a certain time with approaching NEOs in that same time frame is a fallacy. It would be like saying, fireball rates went up right after christmas, that must be why those dead birds are falling from the sky.

Bob Lunsford of the American Meteor Society pointed out that an increase in reported fireballs does not correlate to an increase in actual fireball rates. It just means more people are seeing them and reporting them. This is a trend he has seen with the AMS reports since they were started. Explanations for this can include: more people with computers and internet access, increased interest in meteors and fireballs, better news coverage and better promotion of the AMS reporting form.

As humans we have a need to find meaning and explanation for things that happen when often times there is none. Sometimes rocks just fall from the sky and it doesn’t mean anything at all.

This appears to be the first video of the Mississippi 1/11/11 fireball.

From goldieblue2005

Here is a video of surveillance camera that shows a flash at 8:47 pm. In Louisiana. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWXpT0cQXKU

I don’t know the location where this video was shot, or the direction the camera is facing. I have been in touch with the author and hope to get more details soon. Goldie if you’re reading this please contact me