2 minutes exposure, Canon DSLR 55mm f/3.5 lens.
August 8, 2010.
The Persid meteor shower is probably the most famous meteor shower in the northern hemisphere. Generally a rich shower, with ZHR's around 100, the shower peaks in mid-August when many people are on holiday and are often noticed by non-astronomers. Unfortunately for observers "Down Under", the radient only just skims the northern horizon, making the shower very elusive, and only a few meteors normally are observed. With this in mind, I was looking forward to having a good view of the Persids from the northern hemisphere once I moved there in 2001. In the end I had to wait until 2010 before I could observe the shower.
In 2010 I observed the Persids over 5 nights. The shower was interesting with plenty of meteors observed, including many bright ones. However, after all of the reports I had read, I was somewhat disappointed. I had expected much more. Personally I would rate both the Geminids and the eta aquarids as better showers. Still it was nice to finally get to observe the shower! I coupled an Olympus 50mm f/2 lens to an SBIG ST-7 CCD and used that to image meteors. Adding a red filter to dim the light pollution and the moonlight, proved to be a worthwhile combination. Despite the small field of view, I managed to capture 2 leonids.
In addition to searching through the images for meteors, I also assembled the images into animations. These are shown below.
5 August, 2010 |
9 August, 2010 |
9 August, 2010 |
9 August, 2010 |
11 August, 2010 |
13 August, 2010 |
The 2013 Persid display was severely curtailed by clouds. On only one night, 13 August, were observations possible. On this night, rather than have the camera sitting on the tripod and having the sky rotate, I decided to put the camera on a telescope and have to follow the sky. The idea was to make it easier to combine any images that contained meteors. to date, all I have had time to do is combine all of the images into a movie. This is shown below. Several meteors can be seen in the animation.