The Perseid Meteor Shower

Well the above image is my best Perseid meteor, it was taken a couple nights ago during a wild Aurora event, and I might add made the front page of SpaceWeather.com, and their online Aurora gallery here. I'll be posting a bunch of the Aurora images next post, as far as the actual shower, well the picture below speaks for itself, lots of clouds and lightning.


I should have known better, after all on my way to my site I almost hit a black cat, slammed on the brakes, the cat stares at me with shiny black eyes, then crosses in front of me, I figure I'm doomed. I get to the site and take some pics of the clouds and lightning just in case I get lucky and a Perseid crosses my path as well, no luck, so I sit it out in my car hoping the clouds roll away. Two hours later, they do, woo hoo, get out of the car, set up my equipment and start enjoying the shower and taking pics.



Got some images, the meteors themselves were very small and fast, then all of a sudden off to my right and behind me, the brightest meteor in Cosmos land, think it burned a hole in my retina and I wasn't even looking at it, the camera of course was pointing towards Perseus, where the meteors are supposed to be.


So I'm minding my own business viewing the meteor shower when along comes the Fuzz, driving slowly by my location, then stops and starts to back up.


So I'm thinking to myself, look inconspicuous, well as inconspicuous as a man on a dirt road with a tripod and camera in the middle of nowhere at 1:00 am can be. I'm going through all the possible scenarios of what is about to take place, like can they arrest me? Like the master chess player and wordsmith I am, I anticipate and meticuliously plan out the various possibilities of intelligent banter that will ensue. So the officer exits the vehicle, walks up to me and says;

Police guy : "Taking Pictures?"

Me: "Yeah, I'm taking pictures of meteors"

Police guy: "Cool, I wish I was, I have a camera as well"

Me: "Cool"

It went on a little longer, and then he had to get back to patrolling the city, fun well it lasted, always cool when your not arrested. After about half an hour the clouds rolled back in and it was back home for me. I stayed up all night in case the sky opened up again, at 4:30 it was clear, went back out, saw a few more and was lucky enough to capture another Perseid.


I'll leave you with a clip a put together of some of the meteors and Iridiums I've imaged since the camera purchase.

Auroras Gone Wild

Got a call from a nice man, Doctor Tony at 1:00 am Saturday morning.

"Hi this is Doctor Tony Phillips calling with a space weather alert. A geomagnetic storm is in progress. The interplanetary K index has increased to a value of 6 which means auroras are possible in your area now. Be on the lookout for northern lights. Please check Space Weather dot com for further updates and more information."


We like Dr. Tony, because of Dr Tony I was able to capture some wild and crazy Auroras, they covered the whole sky. I signed up with SpaceWeather.com to send me updates on any unusual space weather events when ever they occur no matter what the time, since I am on call 24/7 I figure , hey why not. At the beginning of the summer I just went to Spaceweather PHONE, signed up and I was ready to go. They have called 2 times before, both times it was cloudy, 3rd time a charm. Even got my images on the front page of SpaceWeather.com for a couple days, you can see them in their gallery here.

It was a beautiful night, calm yet so much going on, besides the auroras there was the Milky Way and meteors, time to get lost in the moment and reflect on the magnificence of the night sky.


Auroras are created by the dangerous solar winds interacting with our protective magnetosphere, most of the solar wind's dangerous charged particles are forced away from us by our magnetosphere, but some particles do get through to be trapped in the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere where the collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms, the spent energy of the collisions are turned into harmless light creating the various colors of the auroras.

I'll leave you now with a clip of some of the images I took that morning, I figured out how to put music to my clips, took me forever, but I got it figured out, see what I had to do is in Vista movie maker right under where it says import images, it says import audio, duh, I hate reading instructions.

Earthshine, City Aurora and The UFO Show

People I'm loving this camera, in the last 3 months I've taken over 3,000 shots, given me something to do while my scopes are out of commission due to the cold weather, kept me off the street, not like I've ever been on the street, but if I ever was on the street, I'd be off the street now baby. I took the above image of the Moon during it's last crescent phase to show off its Earthshine which is Sunlight reflected off the Earth back onto the Moon's dark phase, to give the Moon an aspen glow.

The interesting thing about the above picture is I wasn't trying to image the aurora, I was trying to image the Genesis 1 satellite that was going to be passing by at that time at that altitude, in fact the aurora wasn't even visible, but after a 30 second exposure at ISO of 3200 the coolest thing happened, the aurora showed up, right over the city, reminds me of how in space shows when a spacecraft attacks another and for an instant the shield of the attacked spacecraft lights up, well we are under attack by all kinds of cosmic rays and the solar wind, and we have our Magnetosphere to protect us and it's lighting up says, hey I'm working.

There was a science fiction show called UFO that ran from 1970-1973, it was set in the 80's and it was basically about aliens trying to capture and kill humans for their body parts, to foil the aliens there was a top secret organization called SHADO, Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation. I just got my DVD megaset in the mail. This show was so cool for so many reasons, especially for someone my age at the time, it had UFOs, aliens, air battles, oh and the Moon girls had purple hair, and English accents. Another thing, I loved the fact that whenever the pilots go off to battle the aliens, they slide down a ramp to get into their spacecraft, very awesome.

I was lucky enough to find on You Tube a video of the 1 minute intro to the show, yep this is the kind of stuff I watch.

Remember to do your part for Earth Hour tonight March 29 8 pm-9 pm, just turn off a light, a computer, tv just for the hour, we as individuals can make a difference to retard the effects of global warming. I'll be out weather permitting to see the difference in the amount of stars I can see as our city will be turning off non-essential lights between 8 pm and 9 pm.

The Auroras

Tis the season, season for what you may ask. The season for the Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights. Seems the magnetic field between the Sun's solar winds that cause the Auroras and the Earth's magnetic field are oriented perfectly in spring and fall more so then summer and winter.

What causes an aurora? Basically the Sun sends out hot plasma and charged particles into space, deadly radiation to human life, this is called the Solar wind. When the Solar wind gets to Earth, the Earth's Magnetosphere forces the Solar wind harmlessly around us and out into space. Some of the Solar wind however gets through and is trapped in the Magnetosphere and the Earth's upper atmosphere where it's charged particles collide with the oxygen and nitrogen particles of our atmosphere, the spent energy of the collision is turned into light energy, the greens and the reds we see are called the Auroras. They come and go before you know it. The closer you are to the poles the brighter they are but in high solar activity the Northern lights have been spotted as far south as Southern California. Look to the North in the Northern Hemisphere or South in the Southern Hemisphere on any particular night, if there has been heavy Solar activity chances are during the spring and fall seasons you'll see them, they spread out from the west to east. I just happened to be taking a picture of earthshine on the Moon and noticed they were starting to form, only lasted for a few hours, got a few pics and hope to get more through the spring.

A couple of updates for you. Kaguya the Japanese Lunar Orbiter has released more HD images of the Moon as well as some HD movies. Also, and I have discussed this previously here, the complete lunar photographic record, that is the original filght films from the Apollo project are being duplicated with high resolution scans and are releasing new scans on a daily basis here.

The above image is the hires scan of the week for the Apollo scan project, it is an image of the Apollo 17 landing site taken in 1972, this scan was released March 4th. The Kaguya image, ( top lunar image) was also of the Apollo 17 landing site, taken November 19/2007 released March 6th.

I would like to leave you now with one of my Aurora images as an animated gif.