(meteorobs) Perseids 2009 photo results (from Eastern Ontario)

Sat Sep 5 17:10:13 EDT 2009

Wonderful Pierre! 

Many thanks!

Long trains,

Michel Vandeputte

> From: dob14.5 at sympatico.ca
> To: meteorobs at meteorobs.org
> Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2009 17:06:03 -0400
> Subject: (meteorobs) Perseids 2009 photo results (from Eastern Ontario)
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> To be honest, this year's Perseids were the most active I've ever seen 
> of them (not having been in the right area of the world to see the 
> 1991-94 outbursts). Ivo Leupi and I experienced two wonderful full 
> nights (Aug 11/12 and 12/13) at Westmeath Lookout, a beautiful rise 
> overlooking the Ottawa valley. The second night was especially 
> stunning, with a good transparent sky and a decent limit mag average 
> of 5.8 despite the bright gibbous Moon (my tripod-mounted umbrella did 
> the trick quite nicely in blocking the glare). I observed all of both 
> nights (minus just a bit of early evening dissipating clouds on the 
> 11th). Was it ever worth it!!!
> 
> As evidenced on the IMO's Visual Data Quicklook page (which shows 
> exactly what happened with the Perseids based on several thousands of 
> Perseids collected from observers around the world) at http://www.imo.net/live/perseids2009/ 
> , the 2009 Perseids were unusually active with three distinct peaks! 
> We can thank Saturn for steering the Perseid stream's dusty core 
> closer to Earth's path. I was fortunate to witness much of this 
> activity, including the brief surge which occurred at 4:00am EDT on 
> the morning of August 12. Then, a significantly more intensive 
> outburst occurred on the following morning of August 13. Around 
> 2:00am EDT that night, the hourly zenithal rates exceeded a zenith 
> hourly rate (ZHR) of 200 meteors per hour! For a while, there was a 
> continuous stream of several meteors every minute, with occasional 
> bursts of nearly simultaneous meteors! I couldn't believe how busy 
> things were, especially considering how high up the Moon was. At the 
> end of the night, I had seen a total of over 400 meteors. This kind 
> of overall activity appears to have been the strongest that the 
> Perseids have been since the early 1990's. Large numbers of bright 
> "classical" Perseids appeared, many with trains. I can only imagine 
> how much better of a show it would have been had the skies been 
> unaffected by moonlight. It was a night that I won't soon forget!
> 
> After several hours combining frames and processing in Photoshop, I 
> finally have my photos! Each photo is a composite of frames 
> containing meteors captured over the course of hundreds of 20 seconds 
> exposures taken continuously between roughly 10:00pm and 5:00am (for 
> almost 7 hours). Processing was done to enhance levels, brightness & 
> contrast, plus some noise/artifacts and CA reductions. The colors 
> that you see in the meteor streaks are unaltered and true to the way 
> that the camera captured them.
> 
> Here's what I got on the first night (August 11/12)...
> 
> This first image is the composite taken by the Canon 30D running at 
> ISO 640 or 800 and a 16mm lens set at f/2.8. It shows the sky 
> surrounding Ursa Minor and Ursa Major. As you can see near the 
> horizon, it was becoming quite foggy, but our elevation on top of the 
> hill was helpful. Many of the bright meteors that you see here 
> occurred near 4:00am EDT, so they are likely part of the dust trail 
> that Comet Swift Tuttle shed back in the year 1610. The Earth 
> encountered this trail near 4:00am on August 12, which produced a 
> brief surge of activity...
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/13845235@N03/3841919408/sizes/o/
> 
> The second image is the composite taken by the Canon Rebel (300D) 
> running at ISO 800 or 1600 and a 35mm lens set at f/2.2. I left this 
> camera centered into Cygnus all night, which was a bit less affected 
> by the moonlight. Some nice colorful meteors scooted by this area...
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/13845235@N03/3841126859/sizes/o/
> 
> Next are my results for the second night (August 12/13) which had 
> overall MUCH higher activity!! The Canon 30D and a 16mm lens at f/2.8 
> managed to capture scores of meteors over the course of the night!! 
> I'm thrilled to share this composite of 54 meteors (all Perseids), 
> which is probably the one I'm most proud of. The large number of 
> meteors define the radiant as a sharp point. Look for the tiny 
> Perseid just left of the famous Double Cluster in Perseus...
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/13845235@N03/3841920210/sizes/o/
> 
> The second composite is the result of the Rebel (300D) and a 35mm lens 
> at f/2.2. This one got five nice meteors in Cygnus, scooting across 
> the Milky Way. The North American neb is visible (barely) below 
> Deneb. The trade-off with this lens is less meteors captured due to 
> the longer focal length's narrower field, but a closer view on the 
> ones that do show up...
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/13845235@N03/3841127545/sizes/o/
> 
> It turns out that this August has had my most successful observing run 
> in recent memory, with 9 separate meteor outings! My observing 
> partner, Ivo, also managed to capture several beautiful images with 
> his DSLR. Sorry for reporting so late, but my busy schedule (and my 
> catching up on sleep ;) has prevented me from doing so earlier 
> (although I was able to get my raw data out to the IMO fairly 
> quickly). My standard NAMN summary reports containing the details for 
> both peak nights, as well as my post-max sessions should be coming 
> soon :)
> 
> Clear skies!
> 
> - Pierre
> 
> 
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