Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Leonids 2009

According to preliminary counts from the International Meteor Organization (IMO) the Leonids meteors reached a ZHR(max) ~ 120/130 around 22UT of Nov. 17, as predicted by forecasters.



The ZHR surge, witnessed by observers in Asia, occurred when Earth passed through the debris left from Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle in 1466 AD and 1533 AD. When Earth exit these streams, the ZHR count fall to the value ~30/40.

Our meteorcam starting to image at 23:30 UT of Nov. 17. In 5 hours of imaging, our camera detected 35 meteors, of which 26 were leonids. This is a composite of the brightest meteors (mostly leonids) imaged by the meteorcam from 23:30 UT of Nov.17 to 04:30 UT of Nov. 18 (because the images were collected over several hours, the radiant of the shower is spread out):


While checking online all-sky cameras around the web, I found this nice fireball imaged by the Sbig All-Sky camera on Nov. 17 at 02:20am local time:


Below  you can see the video sequence showing the fireball and its trail:


by Ernesto Guido

2 comments:

Dark Matter said...

Hi:

Nice images.

Over here i use 3.8 mm lens/wat-902h and tripod mounted - wooden plank extension to capture the recent Leonids during peak hr.

www.nightevents.blogspot.com

Team said...

Thanks for your nice comment and for sharing your website!!

Our meteorcam is composed of:

- Watec 902H2 Ultimate camera
- FUJINON Lens multifocal F=0.95

The software for the automatic detection and analysis of video meteor is Metrec by Sirko Molau.

Ciao,
Ernesto