A composite of several exposures to stack images of five Geminid meteors into a wide view of the winter sky with Comet Wirtanen at upper right in Taurus, taken on December 12, 2018. The meteors are shooting away from the radiant point in Gemini near the bluish-white star Castor at left. The Milky Way runs vertically through the frame from Auriga at top to past Orion at bottom. All the images for the base sky layer and the meteors were shot as part of the same sequence and framing, with a 24mm lens and Nikon D750 on a Star Adventurer tracker. The camera is unmodified so the red nebulosity in this part of the sky appears rather pale. Capella and the Pleiades are at top, Orion is at bottom, Taurus is at centre, while Gemini and the radiant point of the shower is at lower left. The Taurus Dark Clouds complex is at upper centre. All exposures were 30 seconds at f/2 and ISO 1600. I started the sequence with the camera framing this area of the sky when it was just rising in the east in the moonlight then followed it for 4 hours until clouds moved in. So all the images align, but out of 477 frames shot only these 5 had Geminid meteors. Images layered and stacked in Photoshop.
Comet Wirtanen 46P at perihelion (at its closest to the Sun) in a telescopic close-up on December 12, 2018. It was then near the stars Xi (centre right) and Omicron (bottom right) Tauri. There is no sign of a tail in this image, though it was taken through some thin cloud. This is with the 106mm aperture Astro-Physics Traveler for a field roughly 3.3 x 2.2 degrees at f/5.8 with the 6x7 field flattener. This is a stack of 2 x 4-minute exposures aligned on the stars and 2 x 1-minute exposures aligned on the comet for the starlike core. All with the Canon 6D MkII at ISO 1600. Taken from home.
Comet Wirtanen (46P) now in Taurus and here approaching the Hyades (bottom left) and Pleiades (top) star clusters in Taurus. The red giant star Aldebaran is the brightest star at lower left. This image provides a nice colour contrast beween yellow Aldebaran, the blue Pleiades, and the cyan/green comet. This was the evening of December 12, 2018, taken from home in rural southern Alberta as the waxing crescent Moon was setting. The comet was easily visible with the unaided eye, even with the Moon up, though it was just a small faint smudge. But there was no question seeing it tonight. This is a stack of eleven 1-minute tracked exposures at f/2.8 with the Rokinon 85mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 1600, all median stacked to eliminate some short satellite trails in several frames. The camera was on the Star Adventurer Mini tracker. Photogenic diffraction spikes added just for artistic effect with Astronomy Tools actions.
