11.17.2009

leonids s24o

The showers peaked between 1230 and 230am last night, so we headed out for a night of stargazing.

These photos are high resolution but picasa does poorly with black skies--you can (should?) click through to the album and open them full size if you want the real deal.


It only took about 250 photos triggered from an automatic timer, but I captured a meteor. The photo is framed by the big dipper to the left, and Leo on the right. If you trace a line out using the stars defining the lower side of the cup, you pass straight through the meteor and can see Regulus--a four star system which forms the brightest point in Leo. I'm pretty happy about the orientation of the meteor, since it can be readily identified as a Leonid. Green, too. There's also a recently discovered rocky exoplanet in Leo, Gliese 436b--with another waiting confirmation (c).


enlarged.


lots of photos without meteors...


I used Emily's Ricoh to do some wide angle site photos while the canon was surveying.


morning over the reservoirs


frost


riding out


A worthwhile trip, you can still catch the showers tonight--they'll be tapering off in frequency from here on out. Early morning is best.

As always, send me an email, message or comment if you want a full resolution photo for personal use--I'll drop the watermark as well.

Finally, here's a good article on streetsblog which examines climate change, personal choice, social ignorance of science, government corruption, copenhagen, and the bicycle. Let's preserve this fragile speck in an infinite cosmos.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi
I'm surprised that nobody else has remarked on your photos. Very nice indeed. Thank you for sharing them.

erik said...

Thanks billy, I'm glad you enjoyed them. More to come, as always!

Steve said...

I kept seeing more meteors in your pictures than you acknowledged being there. It seemed odd that you's miss such obvious lines of light in your shots. Then I realized I had a line of something smeared on my computer screen.