A Video of the Geminid Meteor Shower

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Last December, I posted several images of meteors taken from my backyard of the Geminid Meteor Shower. Now, I have done something slightly different with them. Above is a combined image of several of the brightest meteors on the night of Dec. 13-14, 2012.

As I mentioned last December, I took 1,555 images in 8 hours and 27 minutes. Since then I have been learning how to created time lapse videos, specifically for comet PanSTAARS. With those newly learned skills, I created a time lapse video of the whole night. All of the images take about 1.5 minutes to play, but I have done some other things to the video to make it more enjoyable, so it is now 5 minutes long. It is available on YouTube . It is best viewed on a large monitor and at 1080p (click the HD icon at the lower right of the video). You can dowload it for personal use and educational purposes only from Here.

Following Comet PanSTARRS

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I have been having a lot of fun these last couple of weeks with comet panSTAARS.  The image above was taken on March 18, about 8:30 p.m.  Just as the camera shutter opened for 2.5 seconds, a car's headlights lit up the road and the houses. Normally, headlights are not what I want to see, but in this case it was a happy  to have them. The lens used was my 70-200mm f/2.8 Canon, ISO 1600 and +2/3 exposure compensation.

Although this comet is not as bright as it was hoped to be, I've never seen it without optical aid, it is good enough to capture with a few seconds of exposure and will be in the northwest evening skies heading further north every day. Unfortunately, as it climbs higher in the sky it is also moving away from us and getting fainter. During the last part of May the comet will be about 5 degrees away the North Star.

The above image was taken 5 days earlier, but with more clouds in the sky. This was a 2 second exposure using my 70-200mm f/2.8 Canon lens at 70mm, ISO 800. The shots I took from both days were used to make a time lapse video. You can see it on YouTube here. However, for a higher resolution video download it here.

The first picture I took of the comet was March 12.  At this time a 1.5 day old moon was just to the right of the comet making for a nice composition. Notice what looks like a star with a shadow above the comet. This is actually an airplane. The airplane and a flock of geese can be seen flying in this time lapse on YouTube I created from that day. A higher resolution version is here.

On the same evening, using my 300mm f/4 lens I took the image above which shows the planet Uranus below the comet. They look fairly close together, but in fact are very far apart. The comet was 104 million miles from us and Uranus was 1,953 million miles away.

Geminid Meteor Shower

What a wonderful night of meteor watching!  This year's Geminid Meteor Shower, on December 13-14, has got to be one of the best in a long time.  I set up my camera in my backyard and started shooting around 6:30 p.m. and didn't stop until about 4:30 a.m.  In those 10 hours I shot 1,155 pictures.  I didn't know how many of those images had meteors in them until I got some sleep.  Four hours later, I started going through each one, and I was amazed!  I got 37 meteors, quite a few airplanes and a few tumbling satellites.  Here are a few of the better ones.  Above is a Geminid burning up in the Earth's atmospher at 1:09 a.m., just below the Orion constellation.

This Geminid, at 1:17 a.m., below the bright star Sirius, starts out as a faint streak then explodes into a burst of light (click on the image for a larger view).  This particular meteor shower's debris is from a comet "rock", an asteriod called 3200 Phaethon.  Most showers are from debris streams left over from comets, however, in this case, this comet is dead, but the debris stream is still alive and well.

Here we have the Winter Milky Way between the Geminid and Orion on the right.  Geminids seemingly come from the constellation Gemini, just out of the picture at the top.

At 3:16 a.m., just as clouds started rolling in, a nice bright Geminid streaks at upper left while Orion is exiting at upper right.

This is not a meteor, but a very slow moving and tumbling satellite.  The picture is a combination of eight images.  Each exposure lasted 20 seconds plus 1 second interval, therefore the satellite traveled from top to bottom in 2 minutes and 48 seconds.  The gaps are from the 1 second intervals between ead shot.

Technical Data:

• Camera: Canon 4Ti on a tripod
• Lens: Canon 10-22mm f/3.5 (set at 10mm f3.5)
• ISO: 3200
• Exposures: 1,555 shots, each 20 seconds
• AC adapter in place of battery
• Dew Heater powered from a 110v/12v transformer wrapped around lens for dew prevention
• Canon Intervalometer for unattended exposures
• USB connecter from Camera to laptop for automaticlaly downloading images

What Creates a Ring Around the Moon?

Looking up at the Full Moon tonight, I saw a wonderful ring around the Moon, so I grabbed my camera with a wide angle lens, put it on a tripod and took several images.

These rings, or halos around the Moon are caused by sunlight reflecting off the Moon then striking ice crystals high in the Earth's atmosphere, where it is refracted into a 22 degree halo. These ice crystals are usually in very high cirrus clouds, around 20,000 feet above our heads.

Technical Data:

• Camera: Canon 4Ti
• Lens: Canon 10-22mm f/3.5 (set at 10mm f/3.5)
• Exposure: 8 seconds
• ISO: 200

The Moon, Venus & Jupiter and the Morning Sky

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Gloria and I spent a very nice all-nighter at the Astronomical Society of Kansas City's Dark Sky Site.  We were hoping to photograph some aurora that were predicted, but did not appear.  The night before, I was intrigued by the great image my good friend and astrophotographer Dan Bush took.  But that didn't deter me from taking some other images on this wonderfully clear night.  The above image was taken just before morning twilight and just after the crescent moon rose above the tree tops.

ASKC members Keith Rawlings and Jim Kethum were the only other observers that night.  Their observing tents can be seen glowing with red lights.  Up and to the right of the moon is Venus and Jupiter.  The day before, the moon was sitting between these planets.  The Hyades star cluster form a distinctive "V" shaped group of stars, which makes up the head of the Taurus, the Bull.  The bright star in the Hyades is Aldebaran, which marks the glaring "eye" of the Bull.  Above the Hyades is the beautiful Pleiades cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters, and as Messier 45.

To the left of Taurus is the constellation Auriga, the Charioteer.  Auriga is usually portrayed with a goat over one shoulder.  The bright star Capella, meaning little she-goat, marks Auriga's left shoulder.  The three small stars to the right of Capella are known as the Kids of Capella.

Above Auriga is another constellation, the Greek hero Perseus.  The brightest star in Perseus is Mirfak, meaning "the elbow" of Perseus.  The area around Mirfak is a wonderful area filled with many star clusters and great for scanning with a pair of binoculars. To the right of Mirfak is a star called Algol, whose name in Arabic means "head of the demon".  Algol is the best known example of an eclipsing binary star.  A companion star passes in front of Algol every 2.87 days blocking part of the light from Algol making it dim almost a full magnitude for about 10 hours.

These are all normally called Fall and Winter constellations, seen in evening skies in November and December.  But I took this picture at 3:37 in the morning, when most people are sound asleep.

Above is a closer view of the moon, Venus and Jupiter trio.  The dark side of the moon is easy to see during a crescent phase such as this.  The bright side of the moon shines from direct sunlight, but the dark side shines from light reflected of earth then to the moon and on to our eyes.  It is therefore called "Earthshine".  Notice the interesting cloud between Venus and Aldebaran.

Technical Info:
Upper Photo - Canon Xti, zoom lens set at 18mm f/3.5, 30 seconds of exposure, ISO 1600.
Lower Photo - Canon Xti, zoom lens set at 41mm f/5, 15 seconds of exposure, ISO 1600.

ISS Jumps Over The Moon

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The local weatherman mentioned that the International Space Station was going to pass across the face of the Moon tonight.  So I checked the one source that is easy to use for getting this type of information: heavens-above.com.  It told me that the ISS was going to pass north of the Moon from my location, about 30 miles south of Kansas City.  Putting in some locations further north, it looked like some people north of Kansas City might see it cross the Moon, but not me.

I decided to take some pictures of it anyway, so I set up my Canon Xti on a tripod, attaching my 10-22mm wide angle lens on it.  I auto focused on the Moon, then turned off auto-focus.  I took a few test exposures to find out the best one to use.  The ISS took about 5 minutes to go across the sky, rising in the West and fading into Earth's shadow in the South.  One minute exposure at f/3.5 and 1600 ISO was way too bright, making the scene look like daylight.  A 5 minute exposure would turn the image white.  Lowering the ISO and/or increasing the f/ratio would make the sky darker, but it would also dim the stars and the ISS, so  I settled on 15 seconds at f/3.5 and ISO 800.

It took 14 images to get it as it cleared the tree tops until about 3.5 minutes later when it faded into the Earth's shadow.  I processed the 14 images in a free program called DeepSkyStacker, which stacked all of the images on top of each other and produced one image.  Images created this way make a RAW file, which is very dark, so I had to put it into Photoshop to stretch it into the image you see above.  If you look close, there is a small gap along the track of the ISS , this is caused by the small amount of time between each exposure.  The shorter streaks are of course stars trailing because of the long combined exposures.

It turns out that a friend of mine, Joe Wright, who lives way north of Kansas City, said it did go across the Moon where he lives.  He tried to take pictures of it, but says his camera failed.  Better luck next time Joe.

Ring of Fire! The Annular Solar Eclipse of 2012

Better late then never.  I've been so busy since the Annular Eclipse last May 20th, I haven't had a chance to work on the images, but I finally have them done.  I created a video of the event, which can be seen on YouTube.  Just click here:

Annular Solar Eclipse Video

My wife, Gloria, and I left Castle Rock, Colorado bright and early at 4:30 Sunday morning, the day of the eclipse.  We arrived in Sante Fe, NM around noon, where we ate a great lunch at the Tune-Up Cafe, a very small cafe we wanted to try after watching a TV show about it on the Food Network show Drive-ins, Diners and Dives.  The small, clean diner was getting crowded, but we got a table before the lunch crowd came in.

A few more miles further south we arrived in Albuquerque to a clear blue sky, although I could see some clouds starting to build over the mountains to the west of the city.  I called Elizabeth Brown, a fellow Astronomical Society of Kansas City club member, to see where she and other club members were.  Elizabeth and the rest of the group rode a train from Kansas City and were now driving back to Albuquerque from visiting the Very Large Array.  The VLA is a set of very big radio telescope that you may remember were prominently displayed in the movie "Contact" starring Jodie Foster.  I've never been to the VLA, and I had no time to visit this time around.  Hopefully some day.

I told Elizabeth that we were going to drive west of the city into the country side in search of a better looking horizon instead of buildings .  I drove along I-40, which is also the old Route 66 highway.  I ended up in the town of Laguna, where I took a side road going north closer to the center line of the eclipse.  About 15 miles later I ended up in Seboyeta, a very small town and a dead end and nothing I liked for a good horizon.  We headed back to Laguna and then further west staying on a side road next to I-40.  A few miles before we got to Grants, NM, I turned south on a road to the entrance of El Malpais National Monument, where we quickly saw a view of a huge valley with mountains off in the distance.

El Malpais is a huge area of molten lava trenches, caves, cinder cones and shield volcanoes.  I wold love to visit this place some day, but not on this day.  Instead, I parked and set up my tripod and camera.  I used my Canon 300mm f/4 with a 1.4 extender making the final focal length 420mm at f/5.6.  Focus is pretty simple with this lens.  I use the camera's auto focus mode on the edge of the sun, but then turn of auto focus, otherwise, once I center the sun the focus points of the camera may not be near the edge anymore and the camera will try to find focus and never find it.  This was the scene looking west, with plenty of clouds, but no time to look for a better place.

Soon after I was set up, a young woman drove up and set up a tripod and camera a few yards from us.  Gloria went over to talk to her for a bit.  When she came back she told me that she was also planning on taking pictures of the eclipse, but she did not have a solar filter.  I'm pretty sure she didn't get anything, because the sky was just too clear to shoot the Sun without a solar filter.

The first bites of the sun by the moon came right on time, but a few clouds also took some bites right near first contact.  You can see this on the video.  A few more clouds came and went, but for the most part, it was clear.

Some time before the mid-eclipse a car drove up with a young couple stopping to get a view of the eclipse.  They did not have solar filters so we let them use some extra solar filter glasses that we had.  Second contact came right on time, but just as the Moon was moving to the center of the Sun some clouds ruined our view and my pictures of a perfect ring of fire.  You can see the clouds breaking up the ring on the video.  They did not go away until after third contact.

Just as the couple drove off, another car showed up.  A woman, a man and a young girl were using solar filter glasses.  I invited them over to have a look at the eclipse through my camera, which gave a much better view.  They were local people who said they drove here for a better view of the eclipse as it set in the west.  It was nice to be under the shadow of the Moon and share one of natures great events with them.

We watched the rest of the eclipse cloud free and soon the Sun was touching the edge of the far mountains in the west.  Watching the partially eclipsed Sun slide behind trees along the mountain horizon until the last bit of Sun disappeared was worth the whole trip.  Below is an image of that scene.

By the time we got back to Albuquerque it was dark.  If you've ever driven east into Albuquerque in the dark, you'll know that the the city lights spread out in the valley below you is a fantastic sight.  It's like watching the city lights from a low flying airplane.

It was a very good Annular Eclipse, but now I can't wait for the Total Solar Eclipse in 2017.  Total eclipses are far superior to an annular.  This is because during a total, you don't need a solar filter to view or photograph it.  Watching a total solar eclipse is one of the greatest sights you will ever see, which pictures can't do justice to the feeling of seeing a twilight sky with stars visible and a dark hole where the sun should be.  The horizon all around you has the color of one huge sunset.  One can see why people in the far past would be afraid when they saw the Sun disappear being replaced by a round dark hole surrounded with a streaming corona and pink prominences.  Click here to see the track and where you need to be in the Moons shadow.