Constellation of Perseus, Perseid shower radiant, Perseids, The Double Cluster - h & Chi Persei AKA NGC 884 & NGC 869
Description
The image shows several Perseid meteors - eight in all if you look closely for faint ones.
These shooting stars can appear anywhere the sky, but if you examine their tracks you will see
they all point back to this area, termed "the radiant", located near the top of the
constellation of Perseus. It's at this point in the sky that the
dusty remnants of the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle's orbit intersects with Earth's own orbit.
These fast moving (~130,000 MPH), typically sand grain sized dust particles, burn up in Earth's atmosphere
creating these beautiful shooting star trails.
Technical Details
Date(s)
2012 08 12
Location
Gardnerville, Nevada, USA
Environment
Sky was clear but Perseus low and mostly within light pollution dome to east of site.
Waning crescent moon phase,
Calibrated in CCDStack, processed in Photoshop CS.
Notes
A tracking mount was used to "lock on" to and follow the radiant across the sky while all the individual
exposures were taken. The exposures were then combined together using the brightest pixels
at each position from the stack of exposed frames, ensuring that each Perseid meteor shows up clearly
in the composite image.
Of the 40 frames, only 9 had any Perseids in. Ideally a shorter focal length lens would be used
for this kind of shot to provide a wider field of view - and a better chance of catching more shooting stars.
The 50mm lens shows a fair amount of optical abberation in the corners of the frame
and should really have been stopped down more to try reduce this.
The image is a quarter crop from the original full frame,
but as chance would have it, it holds virtually all the captured Peseids.
The full frame centers on the Double Cluster
and encompases the constellation of Casiopea in the top left.
