Halley's Comet's bits, 20th August

[von Tom (Tom)]

Using my setup of the Canon EOS 600D, a 24mm f/1.4 lens and the Magic Lantern firmware I had a go at catching some Orionids in Brisbane on the night of 20-21st August. I captured 3 meteors, where one was definitely a piece of Halley (fast, green trail, coming from Orion), one wasn't, and a bright 25 degree long streak (attached) which appeared to be from the direction of Orion but it seemed a little slow to be an Orionid? In the attached image, Procyon is at top left.

Anyway, here's a link to the video. Recorded and replayed at 4 frames/sec:

Click here to load the video

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EqSH2tbbxM

Thanks for looking,

Tom

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Good stuff, Tom!

[lepton3 (Ivan)]

Tom,

Certainly the right trajectory for an Orionid, and nice and bright. Like you, I'm surprised at how slow it looks. The Orionids I saw were very fast!

-Ivan

[Paul Haese]

Tom that image I think you will find is an iridium flare. The breaks in the streak are nearly perfectly spaced and the trailed ends would seem to indicate this is an iridium satellite. I am happy to be wrong but not sure if this is a meteor trail.

Despite that this is a good capture all the same whether it be iridium or meteor.

[von Tom (Tom)]

Thanks guys. Paul, the gaps in the streak are at the end of every frame recorded, each frame is a quarter of a second, making it possible to determine the angular speed of the object. This took about 4 secs to do 25 degrees.

[Paul Haese]

Fair enough. My mistake.