Derby and District Astronomical Society

Meteors



Pete Hill took the following pictures of the Perseid meteor shower on the night of the 12th-13th August 2022. They were taken using a tripod mounted Canon 450D camera with a 15mm Canon fisheye lens at F2.8, ISO 1600, and the exposure set at 10 seconds on continuous shooting with a shutter release cable. The first image shows the view from the camera with the constellation of Cassiopeia outlined and the radiant of the Perseid meteor shower marked as a reference. The five images that follow show Perseids that were picked up between 23:00 and 00:15. The final image is an animated GIF that shows an interloper that appeared at 23:42 between the third and fourth meteors. This is not a Perseid as the path doesn't trace back to the Perseid radiant and is most likely a Kappa Cygnid meteor, a shower which is also active at this time of year with a radiant in Cygnus. Do not confuse this with the shorter aircraft trail in the bottom left quadrant of the video. All images were processed in Photoshop CS6, and the animation in Paintshop Pro 5 animation shop.  Images © Pete Hill.



The following is a composite image of the Perseids and an Iridium flare taken by Adrian Brown from his back garden in Alvaston, Derby from about 11.00pm on Sat 12th to 2.30am Sun 13th August 2017. Adrian used a Sony A7SII mirrorless camera and a Zeiss Batis 18mm f2.8 lens with 10 second exposure times for the individual shots that were combined into this image.  Image © Adrian Brown.



Pete Hill captured these radar/radio observations of meteor showers during August 2015 using the setup described by Paul Hyde in the June/July 2015 Sky at Night magazine. The Perseid meteor shower shows a strong peak and other showers are also labelled. This can be compared against the radiants of showers in August at http://meteorshowersonline.com/august_radiants.html. Current meteor activity on Pete's setup can be found at http://www.rmob.org/livedata/main.php#Peter Hill.  Image © Peter Hill.




Pete Hill captured this picture of a Perseid fireball on the night of 12th-13th August 2015 at 00:21:37 (BST). This left a definite afterglow of ionised gas. The top picture shows the fireball approaching Ursa Major, with the trail tracing back to the Perseid radiant, (approximately at the position of the Double Cluster). Below the top picture is a close-up of the fireball. The tail shows a green hue due to ionised oxygen in the upper atmosphere, and there is a hint of pink at front due to ionisation of nitrogen in lower atmosphere.  Image © Pete Hill.





For the Perseid meteor shower maximum on the 12th August 2007 Chris Newsome travelled 200 miles to the to the far west of Pembrokeshire and took this 30 second exposure of Cygnus, the Milky Way and a Perseid (right side of frame). The picture was taken using an unmodified Canon EOS300D camera with a 27 mm lens at 800ASA. It was then processed slightly in CS2. Chris comments: "It was fantastic to see the Milky Way in all it's glory. The nearest sodium light was around 10 miles away and shielded by the Preseli Mountains. The Perseids were coming through the atmosphere thick and fast and bright! It got to a point that there were so many stars on view that it was difficult to make out some of the constellations at times!"  Image © Chris Newsome.




Chris Newsome captured a meteor in Ursa Major while imaging M108 on the 11th November 2005 as the following image shows. He pointed his Celestron C6-N with a Canon EOS 300D camera at the prime focus in the direction of Ursa Major and did a bit of star hopping to try and locate M108. He took three 60 second exposure images at 1600ASA and then stacked and dark subtracted them in K3CCDTools. Processing (gradientXTerminator, Curves and RGB Levels) was done in Photoshop v7.  Image © Chris Newsome.




Adrian Brown took the following picture of a Perseid meteor crossing the sky near Cassiopeia at 22:19 UT on the 12th August 2005. He used a Canon 300D camera with an 18mm focal length lens. The exposure time was 55 seconds at ISO 400.  Image © Adrian Brown.


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