Pre-Dawn Meteor Watch!

Hi all

Conor and i met up in the early hours of the morning after moonset. We walked one mile out to the country and found a great location on a high hill which gave a panoramic view in all directions. We done a meteor watch from 02.30 - 06.30 and the sky was in good shape with excellent trans with a very dark sky background. Conor set up his camera and tripod on a barren country road and began 'shooting' the sky using ungiuded exposures from 1 - 3 mins hoping to bag a meteor. Overall we seen 46 meteors. A lage selection of Taurids both faint and fairly bright. Conor spotted a very bright Taurid meteor which left a faint smoke trail in the sky. We noticed quite a bit of promising Leonid activity, infact at one stage i seen a burst of 3 meteors very close to the radiant including a handful of beautiful Leonid ion trains that glowed in the sky for seconds! Conor seen two very bright flashes in the NW and E that he suspected was distant lightning (4th night of lightning this week). The night was beautiful, calm, quiet but we had to put up with periodic short lived showers. We arrived back home after 6am when i set up the 8" and did a short comet sweep through the eastern sky very close to the sun in Bootes and Virgo. The bright twilight ended the session at 06.30. With Jupiter rising in the east and Mars setting in the west i decided to call it a night...good quality spare of the moment session. Thanks for that phone call Conor

Clear skies!

When i arrived home from work and 02:20 the sky was starting to clear lovely in the south and east. The sky was in great shape and i knew there was bound to be some great metoer activity. The moon was near to setting in the west and at 2:30am the night was still young! I headed in from the cold, went up to my room. Pulled on about 3 layers of clothes, grabbed the camera, tri-pod and went for the door. I give martin a ring who was ready for another night on the ball. As we met in the usual place (the stable) we sat and chatted, wile we drank and cuppa to prepare ourselves for the long cold night ahead. Not long after we set off walking out of the Crewe and headed towards the end of the street lights and into the beautiful darkness of the countryside. As we reached our destination on top of a big hill overlooking Maghera, Glenshane mountain and many other towns i set up the tri-pod and starting taking 1min exposures of the sky. It was so peaceful and there was very little cars about. When 3 oclock came we started to get that special feeling, the one which you get when you realize that everyone esle is in bed and your sitting here in the deserted countryside looking at how pretty the deep dark sky is. It wasnt long before we were taken from our imagination to a lovely Taurid which grazed the atmosphere at a speed of approx 66km per sec which was reacting with the ionized oxygen or possibley just a part of the mother comet which was also green. Any way the cold ws setting in and we had to keep moving to shake it up. During glacning round to check the SE a huge flash lit up in the horizon. It was electic blue and im nearly 100% it was lightning. I couldnt believe that Mars was on thr road to setting and how high Orion was since i last seen it. Serius was also very bright and looking as good as every over the distant mountains. As the night drew on the count was on 45 and going strong but the one thing that was creeping up on us big time was time! It was approacing 5:30am! As we both spotted a lovely metoer i thought it was over but Martin also seen the train glowing at the other end of the sky! As the clouds and another heavy but short lived shower pasted over we headed for home after a long a sucessful night!


Clear skies

Nice write up Conor!

Nice image of Leo lads, reads like yee had a great nights observing.

Thanks Dave.

Yea it was a great one

It sure was