The Geminid meteor shower over the Very Large Array radio telescope near Magdalena, New Mexico, on the evening of Sunday, December 13, 2015. The VLA was in its most compact “D” formation with the 27 dishes clustered most closely together. Lights from the control building illuminate the dishes to the left. Glows from Santa Fe and Albuquerque illuminate the horizon. This was a dark moonless night. One bright meteor left a long-lasting train the provided the fuzzy “smoke” trail at right. This is a stack of more than two dozen images, one providing the ground and sky and one bright meteor early in the shoot, and the rest providing additional meteors (22) captured over the 3-hour-long shoot from 8 pm to 11 pm. A total of 334 frames were shot, of which about 30 had meteors: not all are included here - some were very faint or at the edge of the frame, or overlapped other meteors, or were sporadics. I’ve made mo attempt to position the meteors so they all emanate from the radiant point’s position at the time the base sky image was taken. Over the 3 hours of the shoot the radiant in Gemini, off frame at right here, rose higher, causing the meteors to appear at a steeper angle. Thus, those meteors more parallel to the ground are from early in the shoot, while those at an angle more perpendicular to the ground are from later in the evening. One bright meteor right of centre appears on two frames (the shutter closed and re-opened while it was still going). This meteor left a long-lasting train that persisted on several frames that are layered in here to add the drifting “smoke” trail. It actually lasted over 30 frames. Each frame was a 32-second exposure at f/2 with the 35mm lens and with the Canon 6D at ISO 3200. The camera was not tracking the sky – the view is looking northwest toward the setting sky, a direction dictated by the viewing location to get the dishes in the scene. So had the camera tracked the sky the camera would have turned down to the ground – not good! All layering in Photoshop. It was a very cold night, at 28° F or so, with a brisk wind, and with snow on the gound from a fresh snowfall the day before. Indeed, some roads in the area were snow packed and not recommended for travel the previous day
Two Taurid meteors from the November 2015 shower, on November 10, taken from home as part of testing the Nikon D810a and 14-24mm Nikon lens. Green airglow lights the sky, as well as horizon glows from distant lights on this very frosty and humid night for a late fall evening. This is a stack of two exposures, one for each meteor, each 60 seconds at f/2.8 and at 14mm and at ISO 800, both tracked on the AP Mach One mount.
A composite depicting the Perseid meteor shower on the night of Wednesday, August 12, 2015 as shot from southern Alberta, Canada. The image takes in a wide swath of the north and eastern sky, including the radiant of the shower in Perseus at left of centre, near the Double Cluster visible as a clump of stars. All the Perseids can be traced back to this point. Also in the image: the summer Milky Way and, at left, a dim aurora in green and magenta that was barely visible to the eye but was picked up by the camera. The Andromeda Galaxy is at centre. The Pleiades is just on the horizon. Apart from some haze from forest fire smoke, it was a near perfect night: warm, dry, just a little wind to keep the bugs at bay, and no Moon. A perfect night for a meteor watch. This is a layered stack of 35 images recording three dozen meteors (most Perseids but also a couple of sporadics not aimed back to the radiant in Perseus, such as the bright one at far left). The 35 images were selected from 200 shot from 11 pm to 2:30 am that night, with most frames not picking up any meteors. This composite is from the 35 taken over the 3.5 hours that did record a meteor. Each exposure is 1 minute at f/2.8 with the 15mm full-frame fish-eye, on the Canon 5D MkII at ISO 3200 (a couple of the early shots in the sequence were at ISO 1600 for 2 minutes). The camera was tracking the sky on the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer tracker, so all images of the stars are aligned and registered out of the camera, with the meteors in their proper position relative to the stars and radiant. I masked out a couple of satellite and aircraft trails that were distracting, and took away from the point of illustrating the radiant of the meteor shower. The horizon, however, is from one image, taken early in the sequence. Some of the blue in the sky comes from one of the early shots taken in deep twilight but that contained a nice meteor. And I liked the blue it added. All stacking and processing with Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop.
