Aquarid Meteors and a tethered satellite

[stardust steve]

It was well worth getting up for the Aquarids Meteor Shower early this morning. All up i saw 6 Aquarid Meteors, 1 really bright Iridium flare, my first tethered satellite ( there were 2 in the pair to the naked eye-caught on camera) and a bright non Aquarid Meteor heading toward the radiant. In one lot, there were 2 bright Meteors in very quick succession (2 secs). Captured on camera is the tethered satellite and two Meteors.

pic1- The tethered satellite
pic2- a nice large Meteor
pic3- a smaller Meteor and a satellite in the Milky Way.

I love the colours in the Meteors.
Cheers,
Steve.

[Matt Wastell]

Nice pics Steve - what is a tethered satellite?

[stardust steve]

Cheers. I think they are a satellite that is physically linked to another object. To the naked eye, i could easily see two travelling side by side.
It was a good time for bright satellites and Iridium flares. It seems everything was happening this morning, just needed an ISS pass to complete it haha.
Here is a link that explains it better http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether

[Rod771]

Cool stuff Steve!

Well done :thumbsup:

[stardust steve]

Hi. I was lucky to catch a bright slow moving fireball this morning on both the DSLR and ASI120MM with 150 deg fisheye lens. On both imaging devices, the fireball goes for over 1 min. I can see the remaining tail the in subsequent frames after the initial capture. Here is a TL also. The fireball is in the last 3 frames.
Cheers,
Steve.

http://youtu.be/9HJNZqvQVAQ

[bobbyf]

Hi Steve. Nice shots, much better than mine from this morning. I saw about 30-40 just North of Truro from 4 to 5.45 this morning, but the camera didnt pick most of them up. I thought that taking 30sec shots would increase my chances, but i guess it just lowered the sensitivity by having the ISO lower. What settings do you use and where did you shoot from in Adelaide?
Cheers
Bob

[stardust steve]

Hi Bobby. I bet your skies would have been nice and dark out there and the Moon rising would have been a great sight. I got lucky with some of the bright ones albeit on the edges on the frames.
With my Canon 500D camera, i usually use the setting on "M", iso 1600 or 3200 but 3200 usually really brings on the noise in my camera, f-3.5 (or as low as the lens can go) manually focus using live view on a bright star. If no live view, focus on a distant street light. 30 secs is the max i like to go before excessive trailing starts. Lately i like to go 25 secs just to try and keep the stars better. Most lenses benefit from an aperture stop down or two to sharpen up the stars. That'w why i want a faster wide angle lens to be able to stop down a few and still be fast for night time astro. I usually use my EF-S 18-55mm @18mm @ f3.5 for my widefield stuff. It suffers from a bit of CA and coma around the edges but keeps me happy until i get a better lens. I have a nifty fifty lens and that does a great job being that bit faster, but it's seen a hard life and due for a replacement :lol:
I hope this info helps. You can adjust the CA in post processing and crop the edges if you like to rid the coma. I am starting to find the noise level in the 500D a bit unbearable, but am putting up with it for now :)
Cheers.
Steve

[bobbyf]

Thanks for the info Steve.
I use similar settings to you, but with different equipment.
I have a D7000 and last night used the Sigma 10-20mm @ 10mm for maximum coverage. I used ISO3200 and 30secs, but I was thinking that a lower exposure with higher sensitivity may yield brighter meteors.
It was pretty awesome up there, albeit bloody freezing, but I managed to capture a couple. This was is a single 30sec exposure, and there are some satellites in there too. I thought they were meteors at first, but they're in adjacent images.
Like you, I'm after a better lens. The Sigma is a bit slow at F4.
Cheers

Bob

[stardust steve]

Cool pic. It worth a try for sure lowering exposure and increasing sensitivity. I really haven't tried doing that before. Might give it a try next time. Here is another one I picked up this morning.

[ykchia]

Hi folks:

Read somewhere the southern hemisphere had a better view of the ETA. Would like to have your guys inputs on this.

Despite evening over cast sky i managed to put out the video and bagged the ETAs on Sunday early AM and surprising Monday morning with pretty bright memebers as well.

Attached : the bright ones on Monday may 6 morning and this Tuesday May 7 morning.

Cheers!

Chia
Singapore