Messier 100 - February 26, 2012

Click the image above for a larger picture, or download this high res version of m100 3630×2420.

Located roughly 55 million light years from Earth, Messier 100 is a grand design spiral galaxy estimated to be 160,000 light years wide.

Venus, Pleiades and Satellite - April 3rd 2012

I tried finding the satellite on calsky but wasn’t able to locate it. The picture was taken at 9:45 from Freeland MD, if anyone is interested in tracking it down.

Venus and The Pleiades - April 2nd, 2012

Photo details: 8 second tracked exposure using WO FLT 98 APO, April 2nd 2012 @

Super Nova in M95 - March 26th 2012

Messier 95 is an estimated 38 million light years away from Earth, which means the star in this galaxy would have exploded over 38 million years ago. A supernova is the most powerful release of energy in the Universe. This supernova from a far distant galaxy outshines some of the other stars in the picture, which are all in our local Milkyway Galaxy. This gives you a relative idea about how bright and powerful supernovas are.

Moon, Venus, Jupiter - March 26th, 2012

A close up as they set behind the trees…

Moon, Venus and Pleiades - March 26th, 2012

The Moon and Venus at full zoom on the telephoto camera lens.

Crescent Moon and Venus - March 26th, 2012

Here’s a photo from March 14th of Jupiter, Venus and a meteor. Venus is the bright object in the lower side of the picture. Jupiter is to its right. The Pleiades is also visible in the upper left.

Meteor with Jupiter and Venus - March 14th, 2012

Mars - March 6th, 2012 - 04:13 UT

I am still learning how to do planetary photography and this is one of the first Mars photos I’ve ever taken. I’m using a DMK astronomy video camera with RGB filters and registax software to capture, process and stack the video. This data was collected using a RCOS 14.5 telescope without a barlow lens. I do not have my procedure down quite yet.

I computed 3 total trajectory solutions: 1) TX & OKC 2) TX & NM 3) OK & NM.  These solutions were created using the intersecting planes formula published in the Fireball Working Group by Rob Matson. Last summer with Rob’s help, I translated his tutorial into an excel spread sheet and then converted the formulas into a perl script. Its very handy for computing 3D fireball trajectory solutions. My preferred solution is the TX & OKC combo and is shown on the map in red. Here’s a map of the 3 cameras and the three unique solutions from way up high.

Texas Fireball - 2012-02-01

Here’ another view a little closer in.

Texas Fireball - 2012-02-01

And here’s a close up of the current preferred termination point. If this were correct there would be meteorites along or near this red line, closer to the side favoring the wind, most likely the southeastern side. Residents living near Greenville should be on the look out for small black rocks.

Texas Fireball - 2012-02-01

Here’s an overhead view of the preferred trajectory.

Texas Fireball - 2012-02-01

This trajectory model is based on estimated information and should be consider as just an estimate. I am willing to share my source information, so if you would like to know the underlying values used for these calculations or you would like a google earth KMZ version of these solutions, send me an email with “TX 2012 KMZ” in the subject and I will send you the KMZ.

It is my understanding that other scientists are also working on the trajectory for this fireball so there should be at least 1 more trajectory model published in the next week or two.

UPDATE 2012-02-08

Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteor Office published his trajectory solution and also gave me the AZ / EL values he calculated for all of the cameras. I also added values for a camera from Austin thanks to Pat Branch. This input data yields five unique solutions using all possible camera combos. All five solutions are near identical. WOW.

TX Fireball Trajectory V2

You can download the Google Earth KMZ file here. (unzip and then open file with Google Earth).