An alternative night at the Lyrids

[Hughsie]

Get an All Sky camera they said, you can capture meteors, fireballs and meteor showers they said. 

So I did.

Last night was the peak time for the Lyrids meteor shower and unfortunately it was overcast for most of the night plus I managed to have a piece of crud land on the dome. Having said that it was a remarkable success during those brief moments when the clouds cleared (though you do need to squint to see these!).

 

First up at 01:12:47 BST we have a meteor...hooray...no wait a minute...that’s the satellite, Noss 3-7 r.

 

Next we have a fine entry to our atmosphere at 02:37:56 BST...No, sorry that’s Starlink 1838 on its merry way leaving Hercules and off to Vega.

 

 

Awash with success, I then spotted another Lyrid meteor...oh wait, that’s another Elon, this time Starlink 1616 following in the footsteps of its cousin 1838.

 

 

Finally, the last opportunity before it seriously clouded over and you guessed it, it’s our favourite Starlink satellite 1871. Take a bow sir.

 

 

You can’t win them all so onwards and upwards to the next night.

All the best,

 

John

 

[maw lod qan]

Patience!

I haven't for some time now, but I was setting out my Canon with its 18mm lens for meteors.

I would use a hard warmer to keep the dew at bay!

Even powered it with AC so I wouldn't have to change batteries.

I'd sit there at the computer watching one image after another with nothing.

Then when a good meteor appears, it's all worth the time and trouble.

[Leo S]

Agree with the above advice. Meteors can be fickle, and the Lyrids is one of the less active meteor showers, although it does occasionally produce surprises. It is only a matter of time till something comes along.

Your camera is an all-sky camera though which has a lens with a tiny aperture, meaning you'll only catch the brighter meteors that are approaching fireballs in terms of brightness, as well as fireballs. The plus side is the lens covers a lot of sky, increasing your chances of catching brighter events, the longer you are able to image.

I use a 20mm f1.4 lens (+ Sony a7SII for recording footage), and that was catching around 12 or 13 meteors per hour on average for non-peak nights when I checked last (pointing up, around 70 deg above the horizon).  The relatively large clear aperture picks up meteors fainter than I can see with my own eyes, but the downside is fireballs are few and far between thanks to pointing up/and "only" 20mm - I catch (small) fireballs perhaps once every couple of months, on average. The plus side is that when I do manage to catch a bright event, it doesn't need to be very bright to look reasonably impressive. With it being "fireball season", more recently I've been pointing lower down, and hoping for a big one. Still waiting, but the cloudy weather has not been helping.

Anyway, there is plenty to look forward to this year, which is only just getting started. Despite the Moon making things a little more challenging for the major shower peaks this year, we can usually count on at least a few fireballs from either/both Perseids and/or Geminids. If you can run your camera night after night, then even lesser showers, not necessarily known for their rates, along with sporadics should provide plenty of fodder for an all-sky camera. For example, relatively slow showers like the Taurids, apha Capricornids, (here's one suspected alpha Capricornid I caught last year) and kappa Cygnids are all known for producing the occasional slow (more all-sky camera friendly) fireball. This year also has potential to be a good one for Taurids, and an all-sky camera should be perfect for them. I'm toying with the idea of buying/running an all-sky camera for this year's Taurids, either that or I may try to run 2-3 cameras with something like 14mm or 18mm (not sure just yet - will have to shop around/see if there are any viable lenses around that range).