Perseids?

[caradoc]

Anyone else try to catch ’em?

The overwhelming majority were out-of-frame. no matter where I aimed.

I think maybe lightning is a better bet for me…

[ravnostic]

They’re hard little buggers to catch, aren’t they? Naturally, the occurred while I was working, so I missed this one. It’s still a good shot, particularly with Orion rising showing the O. nebula, and Taurus up above. But I like the one with the Pleiades better (personal bias cluster of mine). Soosh has a couple decent ones, I recall.

The next coupl’a meteor showers will be during full/near full moons, but the Geminids will occur on a Monday-Tuesday in Dec., which is good for me, and during a half moon that will set about the time activity picks up. Usually I try for the Orionids in October, but it’s will be a full moon this year, and unlike our Orionid‘s shower during a full moon, it won’t be much to look at.

‘nuther one of those ‘how can I not go there’ opportunities. Sorry Kestrana!!

[Kestrana]

Last two nights were cloudy here but we’re hoping to catch what’s left of them tonight.

[Kestrana]

Also, I’ve decided I’m going to appreciate your internet stalking of orionid since therefore it is a compliment that my significant other is both incredibly attractive, and prefers me to you.

[orionid]

unlike our Orionid’s shower during a full moon, it won’t be much to look at.

Wait, what?

Also, I’ve decided I’m going to appreciate your internet stalking of orionid since therefore it is a compliment that my significant other is both incredibly attractive, and prefers me to you.

Zing!

Seriously, though. I think the proverbial, non-religious definition, heavens have conspired against me. EVERY major or minor astronomical event of the past three years has either been hidden behind a wall of clouds, or in the wrong geographical spot (Like being in Hawaii for the east coast solar eclipse and being on the east coast for the pacific solar eclipse). I can’t even get fake astronomical events like iridium flares above magnitude 5. And don’t even get me started on my ‘scope. No wonder it was “on sale” for $220. Meade’s autotrack apparently doesn’t know the difference between saturn and my neighbors buick. But as Kes said above, the weather is supposed to be clear tonight, so we’re going to go to the beach (with fishing poles in hand, since they only allow entry after dark for night fishing), and try to catch the off-peak remains.

/not terribly worried about the scope, it’s probably headed for fleabay/craigslist
//picked up an 18″ 2000mm Newtonian on equatorial mounts at a flea market for $20. Haven’t tested mount yet
///drooling over $4000 losmandy G-11 mount and a week in the desert. Or Hawaii.

[soosh]

I went out around midnight last night with my son, and we saw close to a dozen meteors, but nothing really outstanding or bright. It was more a lot of little quick flashes than any kind of long streaks.

No photos, as I managed to kill my 20D on my last trip before getting any photos of Kodiak Island, and I don’t think I’m going to get it repaired until after I save up for a new body of some sort.

[ravnostic]

Orionid; Meade’s a good brand. You may be doing something wrong. A $220 sale price probably means a $299 list price, and for that, with that brand, you should be able to do better than that run-down Buick next door. PM me the model info and I’ll look it up; chances are, you can do better (I had a 60mm Meade bought at Costco before my current scope; about the same price; it did just fine at finding/tracking.)

Newtonian=awesome. Equitorial mount=not so much. If you can align the base to circumpolar, you can see wonders–but you have to first find them; after that, you’d only have to rotate one axis knob to keep them in view. For astrophotography–forget it w/o a sidereal drive. For meteors–also useless (but I’ll buy it from you for $40, plus shipping)[consider getting a drive mount, if one is available.]

Zing!

“Zing! Zing! Zing! went the trollop! Ring! Ring! Ring! went the belle!”

[orionid]

http://www.imo.net/live/perseids2010/ As of an hour ago, the persieds are still quite active, and are putting out 50-120 meteors of magnitude +6.5 (a dim star) or brighter per hour, and look to still be ramping up. Perhaps this will be my night after all.

And Ravnostic, the mount that’s with the scope right now is a 60’s vintage ac powered equatorial drive. The Losmandy that I want is a sidereal tracking equatorial mount designed for large-scope astrophotography. I’d be using it for deep-sky, so I’m not worried about it being useless for meteors :wink:. I’m also likely to piggy-back wide field stuff on it to get >30 second exposures without trails. Oh, and while the offer of $40 plus shipping seems fair, I’m not sure I want to carry a 70 pound, 8 foot long, scope to the UPS store. Besides, google-fu shows 18″ primary mirrors to be between $2200 and $4500, so I’ll have to politely decline. 😛

As far as the Meade goes, it’s this one. The first tracking motor that came with it would skip and made funny noises as though the gears were broken, so I called meade, got a service request, sent it back, then waited 8 months before I got a replacement (when I would call or email, they kept saying that the drives were back-ordered). When I got the new one, I went out to test it, went to align it on a couple stars that I knew (Sirius, for example), and it drove the aim almost straight down (with Sirius low on the eastern horizon). So I went for the obvious polaris, and it turned around towards my house. So, I painstakingly manually dialed it in to both of those stars, it said it was aligned, I told it to go to saturn (high overhead at the time, last winter), and it went to my neighbors driveway. I called Meade back, and they politely informed me that my six-month warranty had expired, but they’d be happy to bill me for any necessary repairs – despite the fact that I’d spent 8 months waiting on their service.

So, I shelved it until this summer, when Saturn was mid-height and bright (may have been jupiter, haven’t looked at a chart lately), and ran into the exact same problems. So I manually fiddled with it for enough to look for a couple messier objects, then shelved it again.

[lokisbong]

I went out last night but it has been so humid here my camera fogs up after just a few minutes. I didn’t get any pics worth a damn. gonna go try again tonight maybe. if I can figure where to go to get above the dampness. I saw some nice long streaks last night but none on the camera.

[CauseISaidSo]

My daughter and I drove about 40 miles out of town last night to a place I’d previously decided would be great for stargazing. It’s basically a flat river plain “bowl” between two “mountain” (or what passes for mountains here in OK) ridges. I’d only ever been there during the day on my cycle, but it turned out to be a nice spot – really dark skies and no obstructions for miles.

The show itself was a little disappointing. We were out for about 2 hours between 1-3am and saw probably about 40, far short of the predicted 60/hour. Great time nonetheless; probably going back tonight with my wife and youngest son.

I took 131 pictures and managed to grab 2. Pix pop to the originals. Both are shot wide-angle at 10mm, so the streaks themselves are somewhat small.

[CauseISaidSo]

While we’re talking about stargazing, I’m guessing most of you probably already know about this, but I’ll throw it out there anyway just in case: If you’re interested in astronomy and you don’t have it already, do yourself a favor and download Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org). It’s about the coolest open source app I’ve run across.

[ravnostic]

Orionid I would make the bet that even though you set up the date and location, the Meade lost the date and reverted back to some time in 1999 (or whatever) before you slewed. That happened to me a few times; I had to reinput it and realign it and then it would be fine. Don’t know why it would do that, but you might give it a shot.

And…gofer the new mount–it would be sweet. I’ve piggybacked a few on my scope but as it’s alt-az, I’m still limited. Still haven’t gotten the polar mount (I figured why bother in the monsoon season–but that’s ending soon; hope to have by October.)

Cause; those must be pretty short exposures but they’re nice shots. Each features the Pleiades in the lower right, and a piece of sky that isn’t really centered on any constellation I can identify (Aries should be above it, though.)

Maybe I’ll take my camera to work tonight and hope for the best from a light-polluted 5 story garage top.

[CauseISaidSo]

Cause; those must be pretty short exposures but they’re nice shots. Each features the Pleiades in the lower right, and a piece of sky that isn’t really centered on any constellation I can identify (Aries should be above it, though.)

rav, you’re right about the exposures – the first is 6 secs and the second is 4.

As for the constellations, here they are as best I can tell. Keep in mind this is a 10mm wide-angle, so there’s going to be some fisheye aspect to it. (Click for larger size.)

[lokisbong]

While we’re talking about stargazing, I’m guessing most of you probably already know about this, but I’ll throw it out there anyway just in case: If you’re interested in astronomy and you don’t have it already, do yourself a favor and download Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org). It’s about the coolest open source app I’ve run across.

I had not heard of it but it seems to kick ass. Thank you very much. I was suffering a deficit of good astronomy programs. I love the price especially.

[caradoc]

The Flickr Astrometry group has a solver-bot that will examine photographs and identify celestial objects in them.

See my above Perseid shot as an example – just dropping the image in the group pool will get the bot’s attention.

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