Orionid meteor animation!!

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

Aahh, you all seemed scared off by the sheer number of images Bert (avandonk) produced of the Orionid shower. I hope I can do them a bit of justice here with a couple of animations.

For a quick 3 second look / several hours go here (1.1MB):
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jano...onids_fast.gif

For a more relaxed and more detailed view try here (4.3 MB):
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jano...s_orionids.gif

Thank you to Bert for all the captures. For individual frames see: http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=14356

[iceman (Mike)]

That's excellent, great composition Steve. Definitely a better way to see the action happening.

Great captures Bert!

[Dennis]

That is just brilliant! Thanks Bert for the raw data and the effort involved in capturing the meteors, and thanks Steve for the animation.

Cheers

Dennis

[h0ughy (David)]

top stuff fellas!!

[fringe_dweller]

Very Professional effort Bert - love the animation too janoskiss, thankyou
a few southern Taurids there too possibly.
Would love to see the previous nights show in its entirety, like this is one day, there was some beauties there. wouldnt mind a stacked version either, I know you wouldnt get them all on there.
I am assuming with the brightest star in fov being Sirius at -1.47, that most of these meteors are equal to or brighter than +2/+3 in mag? - bloomin Awesome! thats a very high population of bright meteors - I did read some amazing ZHR rates, and high percentage of mag +2 or brighter in counts, from countries that don't get the radiant as high as us, wish i had made an effort to go out - but this is the first significant unpredicted/un-anticipated shower outburst for a very long time!
Some experienced observers who have observed the orionids for twenty years, say this is the best orionids they have evr seen, not too mention the fact it went for 3 or 4 days!!!

[avandonk]

The animation for 21/22 Oct is on the way. Steve has kindly offered to produce it from about sixty stills.
I also just went through the 24/25 oct and there are 17 images with meteor trails. These images are derived from one complete nights series of exposures of 2.6 sec each (13k images per night). So I am a little worn out from finding
images with a trail in them. I am sure there are faint ones I missed.

If you know anyone who would like all the data to collate with other observations, they are welcome to it. In the future I will increase sensitivity of the camera with an LPR filter or a darker site or both.

Bert

[Garyh]

That is great work Bert, certainly worth all your effort. Good to watch a whole nights worth in a few secs. Thanks Steve for sharing these animations!!

[fringe_dweller]

Bert, I dont know if you have tried this 'free to amateurs' dos only program for automating their detection, classification ad summary in video captures, or if it has been mentioned here before? - but could possibly save some effort? not that I have any experience in this area.
quote from webpage:
'MetRec computes the equatorial coordinates of its position in the individual video frames, derives a mean meteor trail, and calculates the velocity and brightness of the meteor. The software checks whether it belonged to one of the showers from IMO's working list. Finally a logfile entry, a sum image of the meteor, a short animation, and a PosDat file entry can be generated and saved.'
All the 'all sky' stations seem to use it from what i read.
http://www.metrec.org/
I know Joe Rao from space.com keeps requesting images from this remarkable shower over on meteorobs mailing list.
meteorobs mailing list is really meteor central for the globe, all the pro's are there, as well as us amateurs, NASA people, you name 'em they watch that space very closely.
http://lists.meteorobs.org/mailman/listinfo/meteorobs
I am positive that some on the list would love to see those animations and/or data/counts, but I understand if something is just for the joy or fun of it and sharing and inspiring others too, no pressure.
don't be put off by the old fashioned format of the forum, they also kinda have a, now defunct, yahoo groups mirror site too.
I just get individual emails from there, love it!
Look forward to your future postings

[fringe_dweller]

heres a quick summary from the IMO of the weekends orionid activity - wow!

" -------------------------------------
I M O S h o w e r C i r c u l a r
-------------------------------------

ORIONIDS 2006, VISUAL

The Orionids surprised with heightened activity in 2006.
A considerable set of 146 observing priods was collected
by 2006 October 25, 14h UT which leads o the below ZHR
profile. The maximum was not sharp; high rates were ob-
served throughout the European and most of the American
night of Oct 21/22 with ZHR > 50. Large fractions of
bright Orionids were reported by the observers. A popu-
lation index of r=2.0 was assumed for that reason. Such
a value is typical for strong showers like the Perseids
or the Geminids. Sporadic meteors, for comparson, have
a population index of roughly 3 implying a larger frac-
tion of faint meteors. The Orionids used to have inter-
mediate population indices in previous years.

-------------------------------------------------------
Date (UT) Time Solarlong nINT nORI ZHR
-------------------------------------------------------
Oct 20.008 00:12 206.374 13 90 22 +- 2
Oct 20.438 10:31 206.802 9 208 31 +- 2
Oct 21.291 06:59 207.650 18 496 47 +- 2
Oct 21.862 20:41 208.218 13 172 56 +- 4
Oct 22.041 00:59 208.396 12 284 52 +- 3
Oct 22.147 03:32 208.502 12 289 57 +- 3
Oct 22.257 06:10 208.611 11 235 53 +- 3
Oct 22.373 08:57 208.727 13 337 44 +- 2
Oct 22.941 22:35 209.292 8 104 42 +- 4
Oct 23.029 00:42 209.380 11 205 44 +- 3
Oct 23.317 07:36 209.666 7 244 36 +- 2
Oct 24.285 06:50 210.631 12 263 35 +- 2
Oct 25.112 02:41 211.455 7 105 27 +- 3
-------------------------------------------------------
Solar longitudes refer to eq. J2000.0. nINT is the number
of observing periods in each average, nORI is the number
of Orionids in each average.

We are grateful to the observers who sent in their data
swiftly after the observation was made:"

[Doug]

Bert and Steve, I gotta say a big thanks to you both.
That is the very first meteor shower I have ever seen...............period.
Even though it wasn't 'eyeball live' it is still a great treat.
thanks again,
Doug

[acropolite (Phil)]

Excellent work Steve and Bert.

[Lee]

Hats off guys..... Nicely done....

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

The next lot has 60+ images! 14MB worth of gif animation at full size. Coming soon.

[iceman (Mike)]

Feel free to upload it to the IIS FTP space if your personal space is maxxed out.

[spacezebra (Petra)]

Brilliant - well done guys

Cheers Petra