Comments on: Leonids ROCK!

By: daniel

daniel — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 02:09:57 +0000

“Those could also be bad pixels in the CCD”

I have spent several hours looking at different evenings, and I would bet that you are more correct than I am.

I am going to look some more.

There are ‘many’ dots that do not move and they are not all clustered as I would think that geo sats would be.

Thanks!

By: John B. Sandlin

John B. Sandlin — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 01:45:55 +0000

Those could also be bad pixels in the CCD. I’d think all truly GeoSync satellites would form a belt above the equator and not spread around the image. Notice all the white dots inside the structure. I did I miss the one’s you’re talking about?

By: daniel

daniel — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 21:19:57 +0000

Nice!

Anybody else notice the points of light that don’t move? Good pictures of what looks to be geo satellites. Interesting to be able to see an object built by man from that distance.

By: A Ler…-- Rastos de Luz

A Ler…-- Rastos de Luz — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 18:39:20 +0000

[...] “Leonids ROCK“, no Bad Astronomy; [...]

By: Bill Keel

Bill Keel — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 14:44:27 +0000

Ahh, that’s why I was so surprised to hear of a working KPNO webcam. Note to Matt: the SARA board recently voted to have a fisheye CCD camera built for each of their sites (soon to include Cerro Tololo) because we all missed the CONCAM so much. The Kitt Peak one ought to be forthcoming within the year.

By: The Bad Astronomer

The Bad Astronomer — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 06:14:12 +0000

Oops! Fixed my mistake.

By: skeptigirl

skeptigirl — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 04:58:13 +0000

In 1998 the Leonids storm was incredible with what seemed like one flash cube after another going off in the sky leaving green trails over and over. The following years had high meteor rates but none included so many bright flashes. The ’98 flashes were different from plain fireballs as well.

My son and I were in the high desert in Arizona watching with our heads outside our tent. I had on two down coats and was in a down sleeping bag and I was still cold.

By: Matt Haffner

Matt Haffner — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 04:19:12 +0000

Just FYI, MMTO isn’t on Kitt Peak. It’s on Mt. Hopkins, just south of Tucson. The all-sky cam on Kitt Peak (one of the CONCAMs) died more than a year ago and unfortunately hasn’t been revived, much to the dismay of us remote observers

By: Evolving Squid

Evolving Squid — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 23:48:48 +0000

Ahh, DivX codec and windows media player got it working.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 23:47:53 +0000

DivX

By: Evolving Squid

Evolving Squid — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 23:39:56 +0000

Is there some special software needed to play that file? Windows media player tells me to get lost and Quicktime 7 just plays a black screen.

By: Bill Keel

Bill Keel — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 21:03:57 +0000

There’s even more to watch – satellites, sporadic meteors more obvious early in the night, the telescope structure (WIYN?) to the west moving, and airglow bands drifting across the sky. Those bands have me wondering how they might interact with the contentious debates over seeing very long comet tails or enormous extents to the Andromeda Galaxy by some naked-eye observers. (These are the cloudlike striped patterns moving slowly across the sky in various directions at different times of night – they make removing the atmospheric contriobution from images especially bothersome in the near-IR where their OH emission is a major contributor). But back to the shower – I saw some Leonids like that. In 2001. An excellent find.