Comet Lovejoy and Other Space Objects

Pleiades, Comet Lovejoy, meteor and the Triangulam Galaxy

The Comet Lovejoy is still visible, but growing dimmer as it progresses through the sky.  The other night I went to the parking lot at Horseneck beach and was able to photograph the Comet just to the right of the Pleiades and also captured the Triangulum Galaxy which is also known as M33 plus a meteor.  If we still have some clear nights it's getting to be one of your last chances to see of photograph the Comet Lovejoy

information

Path of the Comet from Sky and Telescope

Comet Lovejoy

Night Sky at the Stone Barn

Starting now, if the night sky is clear, and the moon rising an hour later every night and headed toward a full moon, the major winter constellation Orion is visible in the sky.  What makes it more interesting is that the Comet Lovejoy is present in the sky to the right of Orion.  You need to look for a fuzzy green ball in the sky, which is the comet.  The magnitude of the comet is around 4 and can be visible to the naked eye, or easily seen with a pair of binoculars.

Last night I was out at the Stone Barn, set my camera up to capture the sky around Orion.  As the wind picked up, the temperature fell in the wind chill increased, I sat in my car and search the sky with the binoculars.  I finish photographing just before the moonrise and inspecting the pictures after downloading them, I was lucky enough to capture Orion, Comet Lovejoy, and the meteor in the same frame.

To Help You Locate the Objects

If the night sky is clear.  Dress warm and visualize the beauty that is our universe.

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Ison-No

Spica in the Constellation Virgo

Wednesday morning, I did set my alarm and got up in time and went back out to gooseberry again to see if I could see our capture the comet Ison. Well again, I did not capture any pictures of the comet, due to increased ambient light on the horizon and the comet is getting closer to the horizon. I did capture one image winter meteor located at the very top.

The Sky Looking East with a Meteor near the Top, Probably Leonid

My plan is now to wait to see what happens after Ison passes around the sun, hopefully, it will not be destroyed and will appear in the beginning of December much brighter in the sky and more easily located.

The Geminids Meteor Shower and Workshop

The last meteor shower for 2012, the Geminids, will be coming up on starting on the evening of December 13 and continue into the early morning on December 14.  I will be holding a workshop on how to photograph meteors along with enjoyable hours of photographing the sky that night , at the Stone Barn, Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary, Dartmouth Massachusetts.  Afterwards we will also do some post processing.

This program is sponsored by Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary and you can sign up online at: https://www.massaudubon.org/catalog/listing.php?program_code=265-AP12FA1 or call 508-636-2437 to register by phone.

Thu, Dec 13, 2012 9:30 pm - 2:30+ am

Location: Stone Barn Farm, 786 Horseneck Road, Dartmouth MA
Instructor: Myer Bornstein - Photographer & Naturalist
Audience: Adult
Fee: Adults $24.00m/ $30.00nm

Get ready for an amazing nighttime photography workshop! The Geminids meteor shower is approaching and you won't want to miss the chance to take some amazing shots! Be sure to take a late afternoon nap as the start time for the program is 9:30pm! We'll start with a hot cup of coffee/tea/chocolate in the Stone Barn as we discuss the shower and how to best photograph it and then will head out into the field. There will be time afterwards to review shots and discuss best practices and the experience.

Instructions and Directions: The Stone Barn is located at 786 East Horseneck Road in South Dartmouth, MA. If you're headed towards the field station, take a left onto East Horseneck Road and continue down the hill, past Quansett Nursery and you'll see the driveway marked for the Stone Barn.

Registration is required.

Anybody would like to come and just through the sky watching for the meteors.  I welcome, however, registration is also required.

The forecast is predicting 50-60 meteors per hour at the height of the shower.  If the weather holds out, it should be a great evening.

Leonid Meteor Shower - Report

I spent last night from 12 midnight to 3 AM, at the Stone Barn at Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, photographing the night sky and hoping to capture some of the meteors of the Leonid Meteor Shower.

My grandson, who was with me, and I set up our cameras and tripods to capture the beauty of the night.  I first set up my Nikon D 7000 with a Tokina 10-17 mm lens set at 10 mm and f/3.5.  The camera was set up to time lapse to take a picture every 25 seconds and the exposure would be 23 seconds, given me a two second interval in between pictures.  The ISO was set at 3200.  I aim the camera toward the East, because that is where the constellation of Leo would appear over the horizon.  Just after I push the shutter for a test shot, the brightest meteor of the night streaked, right over The Stone Barn.  Reviewing the picture on the LCD screen on the camera, show that I did capture the meteor.  I then started the series of time exposure and have made a video of the sequence.

Utilizing my Nikon D3s with a Tamron 17-35mm lens set at 17 mm and f/3 .5, and the shutter was set for a 25 second exposure.  I aimed this camera more Southeast, so that I could capture the constellation Orion.  I utilized a wired remote to trip the shutter.  I then sat in a chair, with hot coffee, pushing the remote and listening to the sounds of the night, owls hooting in the distance and coyotes howling.  I also at the same time was enjoying the clear beautiful night sky with the myriad of stars, along with the planet Jupiter.

I photographed about an hours worth of the sky with my D3s, and then I changed my shutter speed to bulb, dropped my ISO to 100 and aimed the camera at the North Star, and tripped the shutter and left the camera on for around an hour, so I could obtain star trails.  My only problem was that the security light at the caretakers  residence went on right at the end and basically blew my exposure.  I was able to recover most of the picture and and are presenting it here for you to view.


The only other problem was a drop in temperature, which caused frost to form on the lens and the final pictures were slightly blurry because of the frost.  In fact, when were packing up to leave the the tripod legs had a coating of frost on them.

We did observe a number of meteors, but none was as spectacular as the very first one.

I I invite anybody in the southeastern Massachusetts area, to join me Thursday or Friday night, December 13 and 14th at the Stone Barn, to view the last meteor shower of the year: the Geminids Meteor Shower.  I will post more information later.

The Orionoids Meteor Shower.

Meteor in Right Lower Side. Bright "Star"  is Jupiter

I spent the last two nights from midnight 4 AM at Allens Pond Audubon Sanctuary's, Dartmouth Massachusetts, Stone Barn, observing and photographing The Orionoids Meteor Shower.
The first night, I held a workshop on how to photograph meteors and the night sky.  Afterwards we set up chairs and are tripods and cameras and sat down to enjoy the show.  The skies were clear as a bell and there was very little light pollution coming from the surrounding cities and towns.  The temperature was in the 50s and it was comfortable long as you were dressed for the occasion.  The advantage of this location is that it is close, The Stone Barn offers restrooms, and a kitchen.  There was the cookies, food and coffee available all night.
Both nights, the meteor show was great with the Sunday into Monday event being the best with up to 40 to 60 meteors per hour.
The hardest part, was trying to capture meteors in the camera, most of them lasted only a few seconds and were faint, which did not give enough light to capture them.  However, we did obtain some photographs of the meteor shower.

Fish-eye Lens View

I also did a time lapse sequence, which demonstrated the movement of the stars through the heavens plus a couple of meteors.

Sky Time Lapse with Meteors

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The Stone Barn is an excellent location to observe the Celestreal events, because of its close location to some major cities and yet, because it is deep in the country so that light pollution is not a major factor.
For the remainder of this year, there are two more meteor events with the Geminid's on December 13 and 14th probably being the best.  I will plan to have another event at the Stone Barn for this meteor show.
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PERSEIDS METEOR SHOWER WILL BE HERE IN A MONTH!

The Perseids meteor shower will peak between August 11 and August 13.  This meteor shower could have numbers of medias close to 100 per hour.

I will be leading a all night session for Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, utilizing the Stone Barn location.  We will meet At the Stone Barn at around 8 PM and continue until at least 4 PM, the next morning.

The evening will start with a presentation on what to look for and how to photograph the meteor shower.  We will then go out into the field had set up for a long night.

The Stone Barn has restrooms, a kitchen, and there will be refreshments available.  If you want to sign up can do online at http://www.massaudubon.org/catalog/listing.php?program_code=230-AP12SU1.

Participants will need a camera with a wide-angle lens, sturdy tripod, shutter release, a flashlight with a red lens, insect repellent (preferably without DEET), and plenty of storage cards for your camera.

For those that want to, click okay will be able to view some of their photographs on my computer and learn about post processing.  If you are interested in this, bring a flash drive so you pictures can be downloaded onto the flash drive.

I hope to see you there to watch this fantastic sky show.

Taken January 2012 at Horseneck  Beach

QUADRANTID METEOR SHOWER

We left the house early this morning travel out and sees the first meteor shower of the new year.  Here is information about the meteor shower from the NASA site http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc.

"The 2012 Quadrantids, a little-known meteor shower named
after an extinct constellation, will present an excellent chance for hardy souls to start the year off with some late-night meteor watching. Peaking in the wee morning hours of Jan. 4, the Quadrantids have a maximum rate of about 100 per hour, varying between 60-200. The waxing gibbous moon will set around 3
a.m. local time, leaving about two hours of excellent meteor observing before dawn. It's a good thing, too, because unlike the more famous Perseid and Geminid
meteor showers, the Quadrantids only last a few hours -- it's the morning of Jan. 4, or nothing..  Like the Geminids, the Quadrantids originate from an asteroid, called 2003 EH1. Dynamical studies suggest that this body could very well be a piece of a comet which broke apart several centuries ago, and that the meteors you will see before dawn on Jan. 4 are the small debris from this fragmentation. After hundreds of years orbiting the sun, they will enter our
atmosphere at 90,000 mph, burning up 50 miles above Earth's surface -- a fiery end to a long journey! The Quadrantids derive their name from the constellation of Quadrans Muralis (mural quadrant), which was created by the French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1795. Located between the constellations of Bootes and Draco, Quadrans represents an early astronomical instrument used to
observe and plot stars. Even though the constellation is no longer recognized by astronomers, it was around long enough to give the meteor shower -- first seen no doesn't write good thing is what you do on Saturday in 1825 -- its name."

I decided we would view the show From Gooseberry, arriving there in the wee hours of the morning, with the temperature at 16°F in the wind chill down to around 0°F, just as I got out of the car and looked up and extremely bright meteor trail went over my head.

The night before, I set up my cameras, one with a fisheye lens and one with an 18 mm-105 mm zoom lens (sent to 18 mm).  The settings I used were manual exposure, manual focus, set at infinity, 30 seconds and ISO 800.  I also set the camera on time delayed so I could push the shutter button, and then they would be a delay before the shutter would open.

Night Sky

There were many faint meteor trails that occurred and I did capture some of them.  Because of the short exposure, I did not get star trails.

 

 

 

in this photo there is a meteor trail at around 9:00 and a second one up from the center going toward 2:00

I illuminated the trail in this photo

It was an enjoyable morning, despite the cold and I am looking forward to the next meteor shower, and hopefully it'll be warmer and that those sky will be as bright and clear as it was this morning.