Many Iridiums masquerading as meteors

[lukebl]

Hi folks,

Well, like many, we were clouded out but I set up my camera all night anyway to capture some Persieids, which revealed that the clouds finally cleared at around 2:15UT.

I was surprised at how few Perseids I captured in the clear spells, and how many Iridiums and other satellies I did capture. Oddly, the best meteor wasnt even a Perseid! These are a few captures, Canon 700d, Samyang 8mm lens, 30 second exposures.

Sorry, but it's clear to me that a lot of 'meteors', pictures of which folk are posting here and elserwhere, aren't meteors at all but satellites. I've even seen pictures of obvious satellite trails posted on 'serious' websites as being meteors.

This was a general view. I rather like the ethereal air of it.

This appeared at 2:26UT. It looks good for a meteor, but doesn't appear to have the correct trajectory for a Perseid:

This appeared shortly afterwards. The brighter one looks like a meteor but, no, it's IRIDIUM 63. The other one is clearly another satellite on a parallell trajectory.

Then this appeared at 03:09UT. Looks lovely but it's IRIDIUM 72.

Finally, this appeared at around 03:10, and it probably IS a Perseid!

Finally, here's a video of 8 hours-worth of images compressed into 52 seconds:

https://youtu.be/X60BFsQmDkQ

Overall, a bit disappointed!

 

 

[Davey-T]

At least you got something and I think I caught one on camera which is one more than usual, also a couple of bright ones going at right angles to the radiant so not Persieids.

Dave

[Owmuchonomy]

Pretty much clouded out here but the best I saw was a blazing fireball through the handle of the Plough! Nowhere near a Perseid trajectory.

[Tzitzis]

Nice captures though! Allow me a silly question. Why is it so bright in 3:10..?

[lukebl]

13 minutes ago, Tzitzis said:

Nice captures though! Allow me a silly question. Why is it so bright in 3:10..?

That's twilight. The sun rises here at 4:30UT, and here in the north we have a long period of twilight!

[Stu]

Interesting stuff Luke. We had a different experience though. My group observed from about 10pm until 12.30am. We did see many satellites, but no flares. Plenty of very obvious Perseids all over the sky, with about 6 or 7 being negative magnitude with trails, including a few quite low down towards the horizon but all traceable back to the radiant. I think I only saw one sporadic.

[Stub Mandrel]

Yes... I think some of my meteor pics from last year were satellites, but at least the one that left an ionisation trail wasn't!

[laudropb]

Very nice set of images. Rained all night here, so no chance of a view.

[Tzitzis]

2 hours ago, lukebl said:

That's twilight. The sun rises here at 4:30UT, and here in the north we have a long period of twilight!

Thanks I looked it up! BTW I pitty you fellas up there xD. Here it's like this in 5-5:30 and the sun rises in 6:30

[MilwaukeeLion]

These are terrific images.  I set up all sky cam with 1 sec exp avi while DSLR is going, easy way to separate meteors from satellites.  Speed of meteor vs satellite is great.   Can review hours of all sky cam avi in minutes speeding it up to 18 -24 exp/sec.  Then match it up with DSLR images.  Unfortunately I was rained out during peak but caught a few day before with one like yours not coming from radiant.

[geordie85]

How do you find the samyang 8mm lens performs? Can you run it at f3.5 without distortion? I'm looking at getting one myself but would like to know what it's like for wide field first.

[lukebl]

1 hour ago, geordie85 said:

How do you find the samyang 8mm lens performs? Can you run it at f3.5 without distortion? I'm looking at getting one myself but would like to know what it's like for wide field first.

I'm quite pleased with it, although I've never done a proper test at different apertures.

I generally close it down to f/5.6 and don't use it at full aperture. There's quite a lot of blue fringing to the stars, but I've found that all of my lenses do that. Here's an enlargement from the edge of the frame. As you see, there's a lot of fringing, although you'd expect that. There is some star distortion, but it's a big enlargement you'd expect that close to the edge. A lot of it is probably also trailing due to the 30 second exposure.

[goodricke1]

Love those timelapses. excellent.

[geordie85]

Thanks for the quick write up.

Would you recommend this lens for wide-field astrophotography?

[Pete Presland]

Interesting thread. I do think the difference between a meteor (perseid or not) is fairly obvious. Especially if you examine the frames either side of the "suspect" meteor capture frame. I captured approximately 400 frames during the recent shower, for a rather pathetic 1 meteor capture  

I observed plenty though during the evening so it was still a rewarding experience.