New Image: Geminids 2023
Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2023 7:02 am
My mate @scribbly and I spent a pleasing few hours observing a more than decent display of Geminids last night.
I used a Pentax K1 full frameDSLR camera with a Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens tracked on my Losmandy Starlapse tracker.
I captured 252 images each of 40s exposure, ISO 3200, 14mm f2.8 lens over 3 hrs between 12:30UT - 15:43UT [11:30pm-2:43 am local time]
The 14mm lens has a 75x105 degree field of view covering 1/6th of the full celestial sphere, or 1/3 of the visible nighttime hemisphere.
1) 30 subs without meteors were median stacked to create the background starfield.
2) 42 subs showed moving objects. Of these 42, 24 frames were identified as aircraft or satellites by velocity/duration analysis.
3) 18 frames contained one or sometimes two meteors. The stars in these frames
have been aligned with the background star field and then each frame was
masked to include only the meteor track.
4) Meteors with trajectories aligned to the Geminid radiant just near Castor have been labelled with a G.
5) Other unlabelled meteors are either space junk or random meteors not in the orbit of the Geminids.
6) The star below the white arrow lower left is Pollux.
7) Castor and the Geminids radiant are just out of frame to the left of the arrow.
8) The large galaxy on the far right is the Large Magellanic Cloud.
.
I will submit a separate visual observers report as the naked eye view was very different.
cheers
Joe Cali
I used a Pentax K1 full frame
I captured 252 images each of 40s exposure, ISO 3200, 14mm f2.8 lens over 3 hrs between 12:30UT - 15:43UT [11:30pm-2:43 am local time]
The 14mm lens has a 75x105 degree field of view covering 1/6th of the full celestial sphere, or 1/3 of the visible nighttime hemisphere.
1) 30 subs without meteors were median stacked to create the background starfield.
2) 42 subs showed moving objects. Of these 42, 24 frames were identified as aircraft or satellites by velocity/duration analysis.
3) 18 frames contained one or sometimes two meteors. The stars in these frames
have been aligned with the background star field and then each frame was
masked to include only the meteor track.
4) Meteors with trajectories aligned to the Geminid radiant just near Castor have been labelled with a G.
5) Other unlabelled meteors are either space junk or random meteors not in the orbit of the Geminids.
6) The star below the white arrow lower left is Pollux.
7) Castor and the Geminids radiant are just out of frame to the left of the arrow.
8) The large galaxy on the far right is the Large Magellanic Cloud.
I will submit a separate visual observers report as the naked eye view was very different.
cheers
Joe Cali