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Meteor spotting?

Started by Rick, Aug 18, 2021, 20:24:50

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Rick

Did anyone get out for a bit of Perseid spotting, or was the night sky clouded out? I gather from https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/ that they analysed over 15000 Perseids recorded by their automatic camera network.

I'm wondering whether I should be considering radio astronomy options. There are some ways of using radio for observing that don't need a big dish or an array of antennas covering a huge field (and level fields are hard to come by over here in the Cotswolds, anyway). It's also possible to monitor some things using not particularly expensive equipment that can be left running to observe by itself. Of course the results aren't going to be anything as spectacular as the images in Astrophotography, but it might be interesting and a bit less at the mercy of the weather...

ApophisAstros

On my Allsky Cam i got maybe 4 or 5 over about 3 nights absolute wash out , below my best one.

Shooting Star close to  Jupiter.
Roger
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

ApophisAstros

#2
re https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/
Do they not have cloud there or are they above the skies?
Roger
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

doug

     A few of us went down to Otford and saw a couple of bright ones and a few fainter ones. Nice evening, though.

     Doug.
Always look on the bright side of life ...

Rick

#4
Quote from: doug on Aug 19, 2021, 08:41:39A few of us went down to Otford and saw a couple of bright ones and a few fainter ones.
Sometimes you get lucky. The Perseids have various short peaks of activity within the broad Persid season, and if you happen to catch one of those...

This year folk on the west coast of North America got lucky: https://twitter.com/eMeteorNews/status/1426721910960926725

Quote from: Apophis on Aug 19, 2021, 08:35:52Do they not have cloud there or are they above the skies?
It isn't really fair to compare one all-sky camera close to London with a distributed network of over 40 high-sensitivity cameras, some of which will be in good dark-sky sites. With cameras scattered all around the UK, there's a much higher chance that at least a few of them will have a clear sky on any given night...

How accurate's the timestamp on your image, is it UTC or BST, and how long are the individual exposures? There's a search function at https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/search/index.html to look for other possible sightings of the same meteor, but I found it needs quite a tight window over the Perseid period as there's rather too much data otherwise.

ApophisAstros

RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

Carole

Roger lives in Worthing Rick so not close to London and he tells me he's Bortle 4.

Carole

ApophisAstros

Quote from: Carole on Aug 19, 2021, 12:22:03
Roger lives in Worthing Rick so not close to London and he tells me he's Bortle 4.

Carole
Thanks forgot to say that on post.
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

Rick

There looked to be quite a bit of light pollution in the all-sky view. Of course the clouds don't help, but looking at https://www.nightblight.cpre.org.uk/maps/ it seems the south coast around Brighton and Worthing isn't that wonderful from a light-pollution point of view, though it should be much better if you go just a little way to the north (on the downs) or south (but that's a mite damp).

ApophisAstros

I Am bortle 4 last time i checked with my SQL meter.
The cloud is so high and camera so sensitive ZWO ASI178mc its sensing the early morning Sunrise 4am.
One of my last images from same location NB and OSC RGB,

So light pollution isnt a problem i am 3 miles from sea so not much LP from the south and i mostly image North which is overlooking the downs.
Roger
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

Rick

Fooled by the colour of the cloud, then. I have an "all-sky"(-ish) weather camera, but it's not sensitive enough to do anything useful in the hours of darkness.  Mostly, it catches views of clouds in daylight, though it does sometimes catch a pretty sunrise or sunset.



It's tilted a little north to catch the distant horizon. It also isn't a complete "all-sky" view, but that doesn't make a lot of difference as my horizon's pretty limited to the south and west anyway. Looks like it would benefit from a slight turn eastwards next time I'm within reach of it.

ApophisAstros

Thats beautiful Rick , yes my ASC camera sees stars before i do and shows a lovely Milky Way , M31 and planets(obvously quite small , but they are there) on good seeing nights but no chance to ever see MW with eyeball no 1!
Roger.
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

Rick

I think I should look into setting up a meteor camera pointed in that general direction. Something with the standard(-ish) 88x45 degree field of view should stand a reasonable chance of seeing something if it's tilted a bit up so that Polaris is in the field of view.

It's not as if I don't already have more than one or two incomplete projects, after all, so what difference would one more make... :roll:

Mac

Well Bizzarly for spain we have had a weather front stuck over us for two weeks,
Much to the annoyance of the Brother in law who's currently over for two weeks,

So its mainly broken cloud whith a few solid cloudy days, temps have been from 29 through to 44.
Its not so much the heat but the humidity thats a pain.

We did have a couple of clear nights, but didnt see a single one.

Mac.



Rick

So much of meteor spotting is down to luck. You can set yourself out comfortably with a view in the right direction and still miss meteors because you blinked at the wrong moment, or whatever. It's fun when a good shower comes together, but more often than not I figure leaving an automatic system to do the watching would be a better idea...

ApophisAstros

I do that with my ASC with Sharpcap at 30s exposure continuously , and join .AVI files (can be over 14000 frames sometimes and laboriously go through the movie to find events.
Roger.
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

Rick

The Global Meteor Network software which runs of a Raspberry Pi (3 or 4) and does automatic scanning for meteor events. Apparently they're experimenting with the use of all-sky cameras ( https://globalmeteornetwork.org/?p=163 ), but I suspect they probably pretty much take the camera over completely, and I've no idea how they'd cope with cameras other than the ones they've chosen.

Rick

#17
Here's first light from the RMS camera I put together and left running overnight. Considering how murky the sky looked, I was quite surprised to see anything, but at least a few of the 58 events are meteors, though quite a few are satellites, planes or moths.



The planes usually show as blinking lights, and they're mostly in this stack because they're on a frame that also has another event on it. The satellites are most easily discernable because they're relaatively slow moving, and therefore appear on several consecutive frames. Each frame is made from ten seconds of sub-frames captured at 25 frames per second, so fast-moving meteors often have short breaks at 1/25th of a second intervals, but the satellites move slowly enough not to show breaks except between frames (when the gap's slightly longer).

Rick

A fireball has been reported by numerous observers from South Wales to Essex this evening at 22:08:

https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1458928463587459076

The Ipswich All-Sky camera also caught a good image of it.

Carole

I must say I find looking for meteor showers rather underwhelming, I think the only way I would be interested is to do something like rick, or set up a camera for several hours and stack the subs.

Carole

Rick

Indeed. Sitting out in the dark waiting to catch sight of one live is often a rather underwhelming experience. I can heartily recommend setting up an automatic camera to do the watching for you, though. ;)

ApophisAstros

I leave my ASC on for 10 hours at night and struggle to find 1 or 2 and its a cracking camera , can image the milkyway.
Roger
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

Rick

That's where the auto-detection comes in handy. The Global Meteor Network camera system design isn't up to deep-sky imaging, but it does a good job of spotting meteors. Last night's bright event (at 22:08:51 UTC) was also caught by at least a couple of All-sky cameras, one in Ipswich and one in Eastbourne, so if you have a recording you may be able to find it. It was at least mag. -4. The Ipswich camera got a great view, as the meteor wasn't that far off directly overhead. The Eastbourne one caught it fairly near the horizon.

ApophisAstros

I think they must stack weeks and weeks  at a time to get that effect as i get them fine, but not very often.
roger
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

Rick

There are a selection of images from the Ipswich camera on the Orwell Astronomical Society's site. The one of the recent fireball hasn't been put up there yet. It's a 60-second exposure with a rotating shutter, and was shared on the UKMON email list but you'd need to subscribe to see the messages.

ApophisAstros

Why arent they visible down here then? As i see i get a few occasionally but not on the volume they seem to have.
Roger
RedCat51,QHYCCD183,Atik460EX,EQ6-R.Tri-Band OSC,BaaderSII1,25" 4.5nm,Ha3.5nm,Oiii3.5nm.

Rick

Darker skies? A more sensitive camera?  The all-sky cameras only seem to catch the very bright meteors, and those don't happen every night. My camera caught only 4 meteors brighter than mag. -2 in October, and only 3 in September, and all the UK cameras put together have only seen a dozen or so events brighter than mag. -4 this year.

A lot is going to depend on how well the camera catches transient events, too. A meteor is going to be illuminating each pixel its path crosses for only a short time, wheras the Milky Way will be integrating happily for the entire time the frame's being gathered (which, for the Ipswich camera, is apparently 60 seconds), so meteors have to be much brighter to show up on any particular frame.

Rick

A wonderful all-sky composite of the Perseids as seen from Greece in this EPOD: https://epod.usra.edu/blog/2021/12/meteor-panorama-and-zodiacal-light-from-greece.html

Carole


AndrewRamsay

Amazing - and not just for "five days of clear nights"!

Rick

Yesterday's APOD also had a fantastic meteor photo: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap211220.html

Carole

Wow, comet and all

Carole

Rick

One of those lucky shots you can't plan for.