Not the best Leonid shower I've ever seen... 665 pics... only one meteor caught on camera.
Click the pic to see a bigger (but not necessarily better) version.
Archive for the 'Observing Reports' Category
Observing Report 12th-13th September 2018 (Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner)
It's been over half a decade since I imaged a comet and came away with anything half-decent. Here's my attempt at 21P/Giacobini-Zinner which, from here, is currently visible low in the Eastern sky in the pre-dawn hours:
Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, 13th September 2018.
Subs: 27 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, sensor -20C.
QHY10 on the C80ED-R frac, guided with PHD.
There are some other pics still to process - Uranus and some of its moons - so I might post the results sometime soon if I think they're worth showing.
Observing Report 29th August 2018 (I see a little silhouetto of an ISS…)
I've been waiting to have a pop at this for quite some time - solar transits of the International Space Station (ISS) visible from my obsy are as rare as rocking-horse shit.
For the past two days the weather had been forecast to be cloudy until two hours after the transit but I got set up regardless, hoping for a gap in the clouds.
It didn't exactly clear, but it thinned sufficiently at just the right time for me to give it a shot.
Visibility was poor due to the thin cloud, and the camera was dropping frames for the first time ever, but at least I caught some footage. Viewed from here the full transit lasted about one second (the ISS moves at about about 17,500 miles per hour) and my FOV covered about two thirds of the transit path, I was shooting at 30fps so in theory I should have captured about 20 useful frames.
Here's a composite pic of all of the frames featuring the ISS, run your cursor over it to see a sharpened version:
ISS Solar Transit (~ 09:41 UTC, 29/08/2018).
DMK mono camera on C80ED-R, Baader Solar Film filter.
I'm chuffed with that for a first attempt.
Observing Report 9th-10th and 10th-11th August 2018 (Perseid meteors #2)
Further to my previous report, here's a composite pic including all of the session's Perseids, sporadics and Iridium flares. Just like before, you can click it to see a resized version:
Observing Report 9th-10th and 10th-11th August 2018 (Perseid meteors)
Typical British weather... week upon week of sunny days and clear nights, and then, when it comes to the peak of the Perseid meteor shower (12th-13th August), it all goes to shit.
In anticipation of a weekend of crap weather I'd spent the last couple of clear nights trying to get some pics of the early arrivals, here's one of the best that I caught on camera. Feel free to click it to see a resized version:
Last light was a rainy and cloudy non-starter, and the next two nights are slated to be just as bad. The show, which so far elsewhere has been the best for many years with higher-than-expected rates and no Moon-glare, will be more-or-less over by the time the skies clear here.
Observing Report 22nd-23rd April 2018 (More Lyrid-ish meteors)
From the second session of observing the 2018 Lyrid meteor shower. 365 pics, only one with decent trails, and I'm fairly sure that they too weren't from true Lyrids as they weren't "pointing back" to the Lyrid radiant.
Here's the pic, again the bottom-edge is more-or-less East and the top edge is up near the zenith. The blurry coloured mess near the bottom-edge is a short section of the Milky Way . Click it to see a resized version:
