Perseids
supersonic
Posts: 82,708
To our (admittedly few, but avid!) astronomy enthusiasts, the annual Perseid meteor shower is due to peak at the weekend, and can be seen now. These can be big bright feckers that will leave a big streak across the sky. Worth looking out for on a clear night.
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Saw em in Cardiff, early 80's.
Great show with dozens every few mins, well worth watching out for.
Anybody in Scotland seen the Northern Lights the TV was raving about recently?0 -
Seen some corking meteors during the peak - earth grazers. They sort of 'skim' off the atmosphere, leaving a big long,slow intermittent trail that lasts.0
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Was "star" over Anglesey other night at dusk. Venus? To the West.
Big one now, low, due East/South over the Cilgwyn Mtn. More reddish hue, quite bright.
Best I saw, over the Midlands, lit up the whole sky to daylight, about '83.
Put the crap up me, as it was SO bright. And the sky sorta glowed for about 10 secs.
When you guys gave me the "heads-up" about the ISC over Glasto weekend, I waited for about 5 mins, then, IT appeared.
Bright as a star, even brighter maybe, and majestically right over my house!
By the time the Mrs came - oh er missus - it was disappearing over Cilgwyn Mountain and she was till very impressed too, AWESOME!0 -
Yes, will be Venus, but also Mars and Saturn are in the same area of sky too, albeit less bright.
To the East, right now, the big bright thing is Jupiter. If you got binocs take a look - you should spot small dots around it which are the moons.0 -
I love how, no matter what is mentioned, Splotboy has a sometimes amusing life story involving it
Could be anything from making a cake, to getting raped by sever rhinos at once, and there he is :shock:
Anwyay, what direction should I be looking at, Sonic?
Unfortunately due to streetlights, I can only really see anything in the sky towards the West.
I would head up onto the mountains, but I actually have some real work to do tomorrow, so I need a decent night's sleep.0 -
Pretty much over head, but slightly to the NE. That is the focus, and will track anywhere in the sky from there.
I reckon if you left your camera on say an hour exposure pointing straight up, you are guaranteed to catch one, if not several.0 -
My brother in law lives on the beach, well about 5 mts back, in Dinas Dinlle.
No light pollution at all.
Got a big arsed tilt skylight and even bigger arsed telescope.
Used it once but it was hazyish.
Best night sky I saw, Radium Hot springs, Rockies, US/Canadian border,
SOOOO many stars.
Lady on Radio 5 Live last night about 12.30 talking about the Cosmos.
She was on the "Sky at Night" once, but didn't meet Sir Patrick Moore.
But just as well, as she had a HUGE character to her, even over the radio!0 -
Patrick Moore is a legend.0
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Trouble is the light pollution in the village. It's really quite bad, considering how small a village it is.supersonic wrote:Pretty much over head, but slightly to the NE. That is the focus, and will track anywhere in the sky from there.
I reckon if you left your camera on say an hour exposure pointing straight up, you are guaranteed to catch one, if not several.
It's also terrible on Dinas Dinlle, despite Splotboy's comment.
It's quite astounding how far you have to be from humanity to not get light pollution, especially when you're doing 1 hour+ exposures, sadly
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That's pretty bad! Is not good here either, but much better in the Peaks ie when we went camping.0
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Dinas not too bad in the Winter, when all the Mancs/Scousers go home, lol!!!
Best UK place apparently is Keilder Forest. Did a Mtb leaders course there - well, about 3 - for disadvantage Geordie kids.
Now, that's REAL country Dark, that is!
Got pissed with Maddy Prior from "Steeleye Span" as she's local lass.
What a fantastic voice!
Did you mention Rhinos?
Got an amusing anecdote about Windsor Safari Park...
But it''ll have to wait...for now!0 -
Bint and sonic, in a tent...
f. u. c.
You get the rest
Sorry.
I'm not doing anything on friday night, so if it's still clear I'll try and get some decent shots.0 -
Friday midnight and early morning is the peak, forcast is a whopping 100 per hour in ideal conditions.
I would expect 5-10 big bright ones per hour.0 -
Yahoo new says Thursday Night the best one, but depends on the cloud cover.
I'll be out on me 3.75 acres, loooking like a stalker with me bins...0 -
Lol, probably same here! Will have to tkae a lot of short exposures and hope for some luck.0
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Worst thing is the local highschool's bloody floodlight system. If there's been a game they'll leave them on all night. Damned things can blind you even when driving over 4 miles away.supersonic wrote:That's pretty bad! Is not good here either, but much better in the Peaks ie when we went camping.
GRRR.0 -
Grenwich maybe a bit close to the bright lights. Dunno know, never been!0
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No, Keilder Forest.
Just had some Euro money or something, as it's a World Site for stargazzing apparently, but with binocs/eye, as opposed to large telescope.
Supposed to be the darkest place in the UK, or some such thing.
Got smacked in the nuts with a baseball in Greenwich Park...by a Police woman.
See there I go again!0 -
Really? I thought they specifically built observatories in places with low light pollution, and prevented building within the surrounding area?
how odd.0 -
Greenwich is preety old though I think, and has historical significance.
Just took a set of Jupiter, gonna upload now.0 -
Greenwich was unbuilt about 100 yrs ago, and the observatory is in a huge park, so maybe really good compared to the rest of the East End/Docklands area.
Bet most of the stuff they do these days is Infra Red/X Ray or something.
Beautiful building and there's the Greewich time-line there also.
Total history.0 -
ll my pics are crap haha, really messed those settings up"!0
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Bleh. You ain't seen nothing yet.
Trying to do a panoramic stich of Coedy from Sunday. Not going so well :?0 -
Thats one feature I love about this fuji - it has on board stitching software! It knits three together - you take the first, then when you take the second you get a shadow of the last in the viewfinder. Overlap it, repeat, then it does all the rest.0
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That is pretty cool. I usually use Windows Live photo gallery to stitch them. It does an amazing, and seamless job, with JPGs, TIFFs etc.
However, I'm trying to stitch all the RAW files together so I can sort out the sky exposure as well, after stitching.
Working image file was well over 500mb0 -
Just took some more. Saw a good bright meteor too!0
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Didn't capture any Perseids, and was having problems focussing on infinity when zooming, but got some semi decent shots:
Wide field view of Milky Way arm:
Square of Pegasus and Andromeda. Can just make out the galaxy M31:
Then noticed the Plieades star cluster very low on the horizon. Got two shots:
Again just a camera, no telescopes or fancy software. Come out ok.0 -
That is amazing, Sonic!0
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Cheers mate! Did a little contrast enhancement and noise removal, but nothing drastic. Light pollution was very evident in low down shots :-(0
