Mike's Astro Photos

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

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 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 2011 Quadrantids Meteor Shower peaked this morning at 1:00 a.m.

I took photos last night continuously from about 8:00 PM till dawn and only caught one meteor, but it was a good one.

Quadrantid Meteor - Jan 4th, 2011

Here’s the meteor at full resolution:

Quadrantid Meteor - January 4th, 2011

To see the full shot, click here.

The cool thing about it is, the meteor left behind a visible smoke trail that showed up in 20+ consecutive frames after the flash. That’s more than 10 minutes! Its hard for me to say for sure, but I think this may have been a fireball.

Here’s an animated sequence of about 10 frames that shows the smoke trail left by the meteor.

Quadrantid Meteor Animation - Smoke Trail

This shower will be active until January 10th and with all the fireball activity happening lately, it is worth checking out!

Photo Details
Canon 50d DSLR
25 Seconds @ ISO 800
Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fish eye lens
Mounted Piggy Back to CGEM

UPDATE: 1/4/2010

As I was driving home today I realized that I would have probably caught this picture on one of my new security cameras. I knew the exact time was 2:43, so when I got home I checked the video log. Sure enough, I just barely caught it at the edge of the screen.

Look in the center top of the video to see the fireball at the 2 second mark. You may need to replay the video a few times to get it.

Over 2 nights of mostly cloudy weather I was able to capture 21 total meteor photos (out of  2000+ images). One of these exposures caught two meteors within the same shot (a 25 second time frame).

Doubel Geminid - December 15th, 2010

Photo Details: Canon 40d camera with Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fish eye lens; 25 second ISO 800 exposure

The Geminid Meteor Shower peaked before dawn this morning and observers around the globe are reporting one of the best showings in years boasting rates of over 100 meteors per hour. The east coast and much of the country was under clouds and snow storms. I setup my camera while it was cloudy hoping conditions might change. Fortunately between 2:30-4 am the clouds cleared up a bit and in that 1.5 hours I photographed 13 meteors. Its cloud tonight, but I’m trying the same plan again. Here’s one of the photos from last night. I’m still processing the other pictures and will post more later.

Geminid Meteor Shower - December 15th, 2010

The full moon on January 30th, 2010 was the biggest and brightest it will be all year according to space.com. The moon travels in an elliptical orbit around the Earth and it is closer at some times than others. About 2 times a year this closeness coincides with a full moon and that’s what happened Saturday night. Despite the extra big full moon I tried doing some meteor photography Sunday night. I actually caught a couple. You can see in this picture the moon is huge. Part of this is due to the 25 second exposure, but even still, that’s a big moon.

Big Moon Meteor - January 31st, 2010

here’s a closeup of just the meteor. I’m surprised it was even visible with the light from the moon.

Big Moon Meteor - January 31st, 2010

Here’s a cropped picture of a sporadic meteor from 4:20 am on January 10th, 2009.

Sporadic Meteor - January 10th, 2009 4:20 AM

Here’s the full picture. The trail on the left is a meteor. The small red line in the bottom center of the picture is a plane.

Sporadic Meteor - January 10th, 2009 4:20 AM

Here’s a sporadic meteor inside the constellation Canis Major (the dog). The bright star to the right is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.

Sporadic Meteor - January 10th, 2010

Here’s the full picture:

Sporadic Meteor - January 10th, 2010

Here are two sporadic meteors I captured during the Ursids Meteor Shower. These are not Ursid meteors because they to do radiate from the right place in the sky, therefore they are called sporadic meteors. Below is a zoom crop of the first one.

Sporadic Meteor - December 24th, 2009 2:21 AM EST - Zoom Crop

Below is the full image. Ursa Major (The Big Dipper) is clearly in view. This seemed like a good place to photograph based on the location of the radiant.

Sporadic Meteor - December 24th, 2009 2:21 AM EST

After taking 1000+ pictures near the Ursids radiant I gave up and decided to try my luck on the western horizon above the observatory. I’m glad I did because I caught this picture.

Meteor or Iridium Flare - December 24th, 2009 4:24 AM EST

I think this is a meteor but it looks a little bit like an iridium flare. Iridium flares are bright bursts of light caused by the reflection off of a specific type of satellite. Iridium flares have a distinct look that is similar to this image. I checked the calsky.com website for satellites and it did not look like any satellites were in this part of the sky at this time, so I’m not sure if this is a meteor or a flare. Here is a zoom crop of the image that shows a bit more detail:

Meteor or Iridium Flare?

The Ursid’s Meteor Shower peaked on Dec 22, 2009. I set my camera up and pointed it near the radiant and shot continuously for several hours on a couple of different nights. While I caught two sporadic meteors during the sessions, the picture below was the only official Ursid that I captured. I spent some time tracing the meteor back to the radiant and I’m 99% sure this is an Ursid meteor.  Here’s the zoom crop of the image. (Its long but faint, you should be able to see it at the top of the image if you click the picture below.)

Ursid Meteor - December 22nd, 2009 (actually a satellite)

Here is the full image and an annotated version of the full image.

Ursid Meteor - December 22nd, 2009

Ursid Meteor - Annotated

Finally, here is the image roughly plotted in a star chart. By drawing a line along the meteor and back to the radiant, we see the meteor originates at the Ursid’s radiant making it an Ursid meteor.

Ursid Meteor Shower Radiant

If its not too cloudy tonight, I think I will setup my cameras and see if I can catch Santa’s sleigh streaking across the sky.

Update 12/24/2009: I got some feedback on this picture and its looking like its a satellite trail and not a meteor. For its length if it were a meteor there would have to be more shape to it. Thanks Chris!
I also got some suggestions to check calsky.com & heavens-above.com websites as they offer satellite tracking databases that can be used to identify satellites. I checked calsky.com for the exact time from my latitude and longitude and found an entry that was almost at the same exact location as my picture:

Cosmos 1950
(19195 1988-046-A)
Mag= 4.9m Persei
az: 302.2° WNW h: 72.9° dist: 1547.2km
ra: 2:54.3 de: +46:54

Amazing!

Here’s a nice meteor picture. Almost makes up for the one yesterday.

Meteor Over Observatory - December 17th, 2009

I almost cried when I saw this picture on my camera’s LCD a few minutes after it was taken. I was inside while the camera was running and came out to check it. What you see in the top right corner is the tail of a very big fireball. Just this tail is 10x brighter and bigger than every other meteor photo i’ve taken during the last two showers (geminids and leonids). This would have been amazing if I was only two inches further west. DARN!!!!!

Just missed big fireball - December 16th, 2009

A friend sent me this rage guy cartoon. Yes Derek, that’s exactly how I felt. Thanks.

Sunday night was the peak of the Geminid meteor shower and there was no moon, which had many people saying this would be the best meteor shower of the year. Unfortunately in Maryland there was heavy cloud cover. This didn’t stop me from staying up all night and trying to catch something. I was watching the skies from inside and around 4 AM noticed a few breaks in the coverage. I setup my camera on the tripod and programmed a series of 2 minute exposures and photographed continuously until dawn. I was able to catch one faint meteor through the clouds.

Geminid Meteor Shower - December 14th, 2009

The above picture is a zoom crop. Here is the full image:

Geminid Meteor Shower - December 14th, 2009

Sporadic Meteor - Geminid Meteor Shower - December 11th, 2009

Friday night, December 11th 2009 was amazing. There were zero clouds, no moon and lots of meteors and other weird stuff in the sky. You couldn’t have asked for a better night and it will probably be the best of the year as far as viewing conditions and activity go. I had been looking forward to this new moon week since the beginning of the month. Unfortunately based on weather reports it looked like Friday would be the only clear night for the Geminid meteor shower so I planned to put in a full evening.

Earlier in the week I bought a new camera (so I can run two at the same time), a new f/1.6 camera lens and a few new accessories. The plan is to have one camera on the scope photographing DSOs (deep space objects), while the other camera is setup on the tripod trying to get meteors. Everything worked out perfectly, except for a few technical problems that resulted in some bad images. On the scope, I had left my camera ISO on 400, I ended up shooting from 6 PM till 4:30 AM in a low ISO so all of my pics came out pretty dark (darn).

On the tripod, I caught several meteors, but I was still working things out with the new camera and lens and my pics were slightly out of focus (darn again). I always chalk up mistakes like this as good learning experiences, but I’m a little disappointed today after reviewing the pics because they could have been a lot better and I squandered the best viewing night I will have in a few months. Mistakes aside, I shot continuously for 8-10 hours (about 800 pictures) and was able to catch at least 6 meteors, 2 very strange moving objects (maybe satellite flares) and one really weird variable star. I’ll post updates later about the satellite flares and variable stars after I’ve had a chance to research them some. For now here are the best meteor pictures of the night.

Here’s the full picture for the zoom image at the top of this post:

Sporadic Meteor - Geminid Meteor Shower - December 11th, 2009

Here’s a long faint one that stretches across Orion. I tagged the meteor so you can see it easily.

Sporadic Meteor Satellite- Geminid Meteor Shower - December 11th, 2009

Here’s a zoom of a short small one,

Geminid Meteor - December 11th, 2009

and the full picture the zoom came from. Note the difference between the way plane trails and meteors look.

Geminid Meteor - December 11th, 2009

Here’s a zoom crop of a sporadic one I think, interesting alignment with the constellation Orion. It should have been going left to right to be considered a Geminid I believe.

Sporadic Meteor - Geminid Meteor Shower - December 11th, 2009

and the full picture of that one.

Sporadic Meteor - Geminid Meteor Shower - December 11th, 2009

Here’s another one I found from Thursday night’s session. It is pretty faint, but smack in the middle of the shot.

Sporadic Meteor - Geminid Meteor Shower - December 10th, 2009

I wish I had one more night with this meteor shower, so I could fix some of the tech glitches that impaired these pics, but the mostly cloudy clouds have already rolled in for tonight and its supposed to rain tomorrow. Oh well, there’s always next year.