Mike's Astro Photos

Anticipating clear skies for the Eta Aquariids peak, I finalized the setup of 3 Watec video cameras during the day and shortly after dark, started shooting with my DSLR. Unfortunately, the new PC was set to automatically do a windows update at 3:00 AM and rebooted causing the meteor capture software to permanently exit. Despite a clear sky weather report for the entire night, clouds rolled in around 3:30 right as things were getting started. But, as luck would have it, at 3:13 AM, while the radiant was on the horizon, I caught a nice bright Eta Aquariid Meteor right over the barn!

Eta Aquariid Meteor – May 5th, 2013

Here’s a full resolution close up of just the meteor:

Eta Aquariid Meteor – May 5th, 2013 @ 3:13 AM EST

Now I knew that the radiant would be rising in the East around 3 am, directly over the barn, so when I saw this meteor I recognized it right away as an Eta Aquariid, but I wanted to confirm it with a sky chart just to be sure (i’ve got a bad habit of mis-classifying some of my meteor photos!) . Here’s the picture layered over a start chart for that moment in time.

Eta Aquariid Meteor and Star Chart

The meteor shower will be active for the rest of the month, so I may get another chance to catch some more of these.