Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Geminids!

What a show! I woke up at 3am and drove to a dark sky site about 20 miles north of my home. As I was getting out of my car, I could already see very bright meteors (think fireballs!) dropping out of the sky. From 3:30am to 5:30am, I think there were around 40-50 meteors per hour of varying brightness, but they died off shortly thereafter. I saw some brilliant green ones which left short trails in the sky, as well as tons of quick, dimmer meteors that definitely radiated from the Gemini area. It really was quite a show. I set up my camera to try and capture some of the action but meteor photography is very hard. The shot below is of one piercing the Orion constellation. Not brilliant I know, this was a 30 second exposure. I did catch more but I am trying to figure out how to create a nice mosaic where you can actually see them. I'll post it later if it looks decent.


I hope some of you got to see the show this morning. It really was quite stunning.
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6 comments:

  1. Jo9:40 AM

    You are so lucky to got to see the Geminids. Over here in CT we had cloudy skies and snow! I was looking forward to it too! Maybe next time, right? :)

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  2. Phil10:07 AM

    Johany - yep! Every year, same time :-) Good luck for the next shower... Enjoy the snow, too!

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  3. Anonymous10:12 AM

    Middle of the night, fairly cold. Trying to take photos of quickly moving objects, without knowing where or when to point the camera? Does sound like a challenge, to say the least.

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  4. Jared2:45 PM

    Very nice! I wish I would have gotten up to see some more. I saw a couple last night while letting the dog out. One was a big one that broke apart into 4 smaller pieces and quickly dissipated. Very awesome!

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  5. Phil2:59 PM

    G'day Jarod! Yes, a great show. I should have paid more attention to my photo-taking but was too taken away by how cool the visual display was! Hope to be up at the dam next New Moon weekend...

    Anon - I love a challenge! Although paying for it now!

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  6. RoryG9:47 PM

    Nice catch there, Phil. To answer "Anonymous'" question: you just have to pick an area of sky and commit to it. Unless, of course, you have multiple cameras or a wide-angle or fisheye lens. :o)

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G'day there!

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Cheers,
Phil