Starship Asterisk*

Geminid Meteors over Teide Volcano

Explanation: On some nights it rains meteors. Peaking two nights ago, asteroid dust streaked through the dark skies of Earth, showering down during the annual Geminids meteor shower. Astrophotographer Juan Carlos Casado captured the space weather event, as pictured above, in a series of exposures spanning about 2.3 hours using a wide angle lens. The snowcapped Teide volcano of the Canary Islands of Spain towers in the foreground, while the picturesque constellation of Orion highlights the background. The star appearing just near the top of the volcano is Rigel. Although the asteroid dust particles are traveling parallel to each other, the resulting meteor streaks appear to radiate from a single point on the sky, in this case in the constellation of Gemini, off the top of the image. Like train tracks appearing to converge in the distance, the meteor radiant effect is due to perspective. The astrophotographer has estimated that there are about 50 Geminids visible in the above composite image -- how many do you see?

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Beautiful image, thank you. Would love to visit the Canary Islands one day. I subitize about 50 meteors.

I counted a deck of cards. 52, right?

That's a wonderful image. The way that all the meteors paint tracks across the glittering field of stars is certainly lovely. The entire sky is like the American flag here - talk about stars and stripes!!

The colors are interesting. Two meteors are strikingly greenish, which is common enough in bright meteors. Betelgeuse is an appropriate pale orange-white color, Mintaka is white, all the other bright O- and B-type stars in Orion are purple, and Sirius(?) is brilliantly blue. I love the way the nebulae in Orion look like purple bonfires, particularly the Flame Nebula near Alnitak.

Beautiful image! (But I'll leave it to other people to count the meteors.)

Ann

53 streaks.

Nice picture , but why are the stars nor circling around during the 2,5 hours aperture?

pim zethoven wrote:Nice picture , but why are the stars nor circling around during the 2,5 hours aperture?

series of exposures

owlice wrote:

pim zethoven wrote:Nice picture , but why are the stars nor circling around during the 2,5 hours aperture?

series of exposures

I imagine it is quite a lot of work to compose images like this. Each skyscape from each exposure needs to be separated from the landscape and aligned with all the other skyscapes, before being recombined with the landscape. (This is where someone says they just press the "Meteor Composite Landscape" button in some fancy new image editing software package.)

Using Photoshop's count tool to avoid missing or double-counting, I counted 51 meteors.

Orion is AWESOME in this picture, the nebula is very visible....great job...

HELLO TO OUR FRIEND ON TENERIFE!!!!

:---[===] *

Nitpicker wrote:

owlice wrote:

pim zethoven wrote:Nice picture , but why are the stars nor circling around during the 2,5 hours aperture?

series of exposures

I imagine it is quite a lot of work to compose images like this. Each skyscape from each exposure needs to be separated from the landscape and aligned with all the other skyscapes, before being recombined with the landscape. (This is where someone says they just press the "Meteor Composite Landscape" button in some fancy new image editing software package.)

That's the button right next to the "Make Dragon" button on my fancy animation software.

My count was 54.

I opened the link to the 1500-pixel version in a new browser window, hit the "magnify" button, and started to count.

My guess is that some of the meteor streaks were faint enough, and others closely enough spaced, to be overlooked by others.

This is the only one I'm not sure about. I think that the break at the bottom of the meteor is probably a compositing error but maybe it's another meteor. If it's another meteor then there are 52.

by Boomer12k » Tue Dec 17, 2013 7:12 am

Orion is AWESOME in this picture, the nebula is very visible....great job...

HELLO TO OUR FRIEND ON TENERIFE!!!!

I agree with Boomer. This is a great shot of Orion. A fun APOD would be a composite of Orion photographs corresponding to a series of latitudes to watch it tip over from my northern perspective. (I’d be OK with the other way too) Maybe it will be a good reason for a long road trip when I retire from my day job.

Is that Aldebaran on the far upper left?

50. Which comes out to 1 Geminid about every 3 minutes. zzzzzz. still, great shot.

by Bry Walker » Tue Dec 17, 2013 9:50 am

Is that Aldebaran on the far upper left?

Sirius I suspect.

I must be all twisted around. I thought Sirius would be somewhere in the lower right.

by Bry Walker » Tue Dec 17, 2013 10:07 am

I must be all twisted around. I thought Sirius would be somewhere in the lower right.

You are right. The perspective changes from this APOD at a similar location.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120123.html

Time of year?

Time of year?

I'm sure there's a better explanation out there.

First of all, this is a stunningly beautiful image, very artfully composed, thank you so much, Juan Carlos. Rigel atop the volcano is like the light atop a Christmas tree.

Secondly, counting meteors in this picture seems a bit like counting brush strokes on a Van Gogh painting. One could do it, but why?

Thirdly, to identify stars (e.g. Sirius and Aldebaran) in a sky image, especially one from an unfamiliar latitude, don't think about left/right and up/down. Think about east/west and north/south. Once you get Betelgeuse, Rigel, and the three stars of Orion's belt oriented in your mind, remember that Aldebaran is to the west and Sirius to the east. This works for any latitude, even those strange pictures from down under where the Hunter is standing on his head.

Anthony Barreiro wrote:First of all, this is a stunningly beautiful image, very artfully composed, thank you so much, Juan Carlos. Rigel atop the volcano is like the light atop a Christmas tree.

Secondly, counting meteors in this picture seems a bit like counting brush strokes on a Van Gogh painting. One could do it, but why?

Thirdly, to identify stars (e.g. Sirius and Aldebaran) in a sky image, especially one from an unfamiliar latitude, don't think about left/right and up/down. Think about east/west and north/south. Once you get Betelgeuse, Rigel, and the three stars of Orion's belt oriented in your mind, remember that Aldebaran is to the west and Sirius to the east. This works for any latitude, even those strange pictures from down under where the Hunter is standing on his head.

Thanks for this great help. (I have finally figured out how to register.)
Many times I look at a picture of Orion and of course Alinam is easy, in the middle of the belt but I get
Alnitak and Mintaka switched.
Will be looking at Orion again tonight! We get a lot of clear skies this time of year.
Weatherunderground has a cool feature where you can give it the date and time and direction and it
displays the sky.
http://www.wunderground.com/sky/ShowSky ... ica/Denver
Bry Walker
New Mexico

Bry Walker wrote:Thanks for this great help. (I have finally figured out how to register.)
Many times I look at a picture of Orion and of course Alinam is easy, in the middle of the belt but I get
Alnitak and Mintaka switched.
Will be looking at Orion again tonight! We get a lot of clear skies this time of year.
Weatherunderground has a cool feature where you can give it the date and time and direction and it
displays the sky.
http://www.wunderground.com/sky/ShowSky ... ica/Denver
Bry Walker
New Mexico

Ah, clear dark skies. Lucky you!

SkyandTelescope.com has a very handy interactive sky chart. I also find their weekly email newsletter and "This Week's Sky at a Glance" very helpful.

cool links! thanks! in summer time (July & Aug) we arent so lucky, lots more clouds but hopefully bringing needed moisture

Hoser wrote:50. Which comes out to 1 Geminid about every 3 minutes. zzzzzz. still, great shot.

Okay. I'm the Pickey Grinch to Hoser's comment about "zzzzzzz."
Counting 50 or 54 in this composit does not = 1 Geminid about every 3 minutes for the shawer. It is only a portion of the sky. Multiply this by the rest of the viewer's domb and it gets much better. Also, there may have been some too faint for the camera's eye that could still be visible to most human eyes. Who knows how many frames were tossed out by the editor? It looks to be a deceint shawer when you start adding more variables and sky to the mix.

Diana