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:
From the first session of observing the 2018 Lyrid meteor shower. 397 pics, only two with decent trails, and I'm fairly sure that they weren't from true Lyrids as they weren't "pointing back" to the Lyrid radiant.
Here's the best one of the two pics, the bottom-edge is more-or-less East and the top edge is up near the zenith. Sharp eyes will notice the Plough stood up on its stilts. Click it to see a resized version:
Typically there was much cloud on the two best Geminid meteor observing nights. Just to rub it in, it had been clear for both of the two preceding nights and it was clear again for both of the two following nights. I managed a stop/start session on the night of the 13th, the skies changing from short clear periods to longer periods of snow or sleet far too often for my liking. I seemed to spend most of the time stopping/starting the capture software and covering/uncovering the camera. About 25 bright trails were observed while only 118 camera shots were taken, but only two Geminids were recorded.
Here's a composite pic, click it to see a bigger version:
A pair of Geminid meteors.
I've managed to get out for a few observing/imaging sessions recently. So far I've only stacked four sets of sub-frames in DeepSkyStacker, I've yet to throw any Photoshop Actions at them.
Here's what I'll be fiddling with when there's nobody looking:
The Horsehead and Flame Nebulae in Orion.
The Double Cluster in Perseus.
IC1848 Soul Nebula in Cassiopeia.
M45 Pleiades in Taurus.
I'll post the finished articles as and when.
From the 5th to the 13th of August I managed four nights watching and photographing the Perseids. 1799 pics later and I'd caught nine good meteors on camera, and I'd seen about 75 while lazing on the garden bench. Bearing in mind the low hourly rates, several bouts of cloudiness and the rising Moon, nine on camera is about as many as I would have expected.
Here's the best pic of the bunch, captured on the 12th - looking towards the zenith, West is more-or-less downwards. Click it to see a bigger version:
A pair of Perseid meteors heading west-southwest.
Moon-gazing again last Sunday... playing around with a colour video camera on the 6" R-C... 17 clips each of 250 frames, stacked with AutoStakkert!2, coaxed into one mosaic using iMerge (see previous post), tarted up with Photoshop CS3.
The result is better than expected.
Feel free to click on it to see the full version, but be aware that it might take a while to load - it's about 12Mb:
If that's not enough, there's a ~40Mb .bmp version here.
