(meteorobs) Perseid photos

[Leo S]

Hi all,

A real mixed bag this year. In total I spent 11 days  in Cornwall (SW 
UK) with the aim of catching a few Perseids and doing some general 
photography. The weather was against us though, and I only managed to 
spend two partially clear nights under the stars. The peak was a 
washout. As usual I was totally disorganized, and made a whole heap of 
basic errors which didn't help matters!

The one bit of good luck I got was on the post peak night, which I was 
expecting to be sold wall to wall cloud, and because of this I decided 
to stay at my accommodation rather than drive out on to the moors and 
set up my gear. Just as the light was starting to fade I stepped outside 
for a smoke, and noticed a nice cloud formation  in the partially clear 
sky, so I rushed to get my camera.

After photographing this, I crossed over to the other side of a road, 
where there was an entrance to someone's property, and as I stood there, 
camera in hand a bight Perseid earth grazer suddenly appeared close to 
the northern horizon just were I was looking, taking me completely by 
surprise, as the sky was still very light - (perhaps only 20 minutes 
since the sun was on the horizon)!

Although for an earthgrazer it was short, perhaps only 20 degrees in 
length, it made up for it in brightness. It was probably somewhere 
between -5 to -8 in magnitude (difficult to judge in a bright sky!), and 
a golden-orange color. What was unusual was that it partially 
fragmented, throwing off at least one bright "spark" along it's path. At 
first I thought I may have seen a sporadic, possibly meteorite-dropping 
fireball, but it soon became apparent that it was probably a Perseid.

Soon after that I went and got a second camera and tried to capture 
some, but I didn't see anything anywhere near as impressive after that. 
Mostly they were 0 mag or below, and in two nights I only saw perhaps 2 
Persieds that were of negative magnitude, and even the fainter Perseids 
seemed few and far between for me. Overall, a bit of a disappointing 
campaign for me this year (compared to last year where I captured quite 
a few negative magnitude Perseids with the cameras!).

Here are the photos:
http://www.btinternet.com/%7El.stachowicz/pics/per08.htm

Clear skies,
Leo