Persistent train from Geminid meteor

[naskies]

Hi all,

I was very privileged to have observed hundreds of Geminids last week from dark skies in Leyburn, and also had a couple of Canon 5DmkIIs capturing time lapse images for half the evening.

I noticed that quite a few of the meteors I imaged had very noticeable persistent trains, such as this:

6.2 MB video (http://itee.uq.edu.au/~davel/GeminidMeteorTrain.mp4)

This bright Geminid streak in Cancer was just under 5 degrees long. If you watch the video carefully, you can see a persistent train grow larger and fainter during the video. Each frame was recorded for 10 sec at 35 mm, f/1.4, ISO 6400, and the duration of entire video is 14 min of elapsed time.

I've also created a montage of the time lapse:

2500x1285 montage (2 MB) (http://itee.uq.edu.au/~davel/GeminidMeteorTrain.jpg)

The left column shows the raw frames with enhanced contrast; the middle column has the sky background subtracted and then linearly stretched; and the right column has the sky background subtracted, inverted, and then stretched.

Hope you like it. Thanks for looking!



PS: if you look really carefully at the video, you'll also be able to spot 5 moving satellites, 3 geostationary satellites flaring, and 1 geostationary satellite at constant brightness.

[iceman]

Great work Dave, love the trail!

[naskies]

Thanks Mike!

[colinmlegg]

Excellent capture, Dave. Nice montage and video.

[Octane]

Dave,

Oh, wow, that is awesome! Great catch!

H

[naskies]

Thanks Colin & H! After being dazzled by the bright meteors, I definitely didn't see any of the trains naked eye. Next time I might try to point a pair of binos or my Dob at them to see if I can spot them.

[Matt Wastell]

Hi Dave - super work - I did pick out a few satellites in the vid!

[John Hothersall]

Great decay of the meteor train caught, thats what I would have loved to get. Saw meteor tarin decays in the Leonids in 1998 fireballs and its amazing to see the shapes they fade into over a minute or two.

Cannot see the video atm - will try again later.

John.

[ourkind]

Wow Dave that is brilliant, love the video! Thanks for sharing it. I missed them as I had to work those nights.

[RickS]

Very cool, Dave! I've never seen that captured before.

[naskies]

Thanks Rick! It was a surprise for me too. Many of the other brighter meteors I captured showed persistent trains too. If this bad weather keeps up, I'll have to post process them all...



Thanks Carlos. I'm hooked on meteors now :)



Thanks John! It's even easier to see the train as it moves against the sidereal motion of the stars in the video. Let me know if you have no luck watching it. Most modern web browsers can play it directly if you have a broadband internet connection, otherwise you might have to save it to disk and then use a video player such as VLC (http://www.videolan.org) to play it.



Thanks Matt! I've just assembled one hour of time lapse frames of Gemini in the hour leading up to dawn... the sky's littered with satellites! Hopefully I'll be able to post it soon.

[Larryp]

Great video, Dave-captured superbly!

[John Hothersall]

Wow, just seen the video and its so cool in motion like that especially on loop and such a strange spiral shape too.

John.

[bartman]

Wow!
well wicked captures there!
Bartman

[naskies]

I've posted a composite of meteors and another video (including two different meteors with bright persistent trains) here in case anyone is interested:

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=100975



Thanks Larry!



Thanks John! During my next meteor shower, I'll definitely have the Dob ready to point at the aftermath of fireballs. I do like the action from your video captures too - I may have to give that a go too.



Thanks Bart!

[astronobob]

Great work Dave, that Composite is amaizing & the Vid shows just how busy it was , , Awesome ! !

[naskies]

Thanks Bob! See you at Leyburn in the future.