[meteorite-list] Vesta, Ceres, Jupiter, AND a meteor

From: Charles Butterfield <cmb62_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 06:07:02 -0500
Message-ID: <000601cde746$f68fab30$e3af0190$_at_columbus.rr.com>

Hi Jodie,

You are very welcome! I have tried taking some shots of various objects
(mostly comets) with very mixed results so I know how difficult it can be to
get things to come out right. I am still very early in the learning curve
and unfortunately am not able to devote the time I would like to taking the
photos I want to take.

Thank you very much for the tips. I will certainly follow up on them. I
definitely need to learn the sky MUCH better. I use Starry Night Pro 6
mostly but it does not allow annotation and it certainly will not do auto
recognition.

Thanks again for the information and for taking the time to respond. I
really appreciate it!

Clear skies and Happy New Year Jodie!

And keep posting those links of your photos!


Best regards,

Charley

"Well, squids don't work. Hey! Let's
  try elephants !"

                    Hannibal


-----Original Message-----
From: Jodie Reynolds [mailto:spacerocks at spaceballoon.org]
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 4:36 AM
To: Charles Butterfield
Cc: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Vesta, Ceres, Jupiter, AND a meteor

Hi Charley,

Thanks for the kind words!

MaxIM-DL from Cyanogen has Photometry that can do auto recognition of guide
stars from the catalogs. When I'm trying to find a really dim comet or nova
in a deep star field from the telescope, I'll use MaxIM.

For something like this with a wide star field and lots of bright guides, I
prefer to just do it by hand with even Stellarium (free) or any other
capable planetarium software. By doing that I learn the sky deeper and
deeper each time. Ultimately it makes me a better observer and helps me
walk a big dob in without computerized aiming.

Sometimes dim objects, like these two, require me to dig a bit deeper into
the minor asterisms, hence the excessive annotation.

In the open source space, you might find some useful tools or at least start
places, here: http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/astro.software.html

--- Jodie

Sunday, December 30, 2012, 9:20:19 AM, you wrote:

> Hi Jodie,

> Very nice!

> Timing IS everything, isn't it?

> As a budding astrophotographer, may I ask what you used to annotate
> the shot?

> Best regards,

> Charley

> "Well, squids don't work. Hey! Let's
> try elephants !"

> Hannibal

> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:33:28 -0800
> From: Jodie Reynolds <spacerocks at spaceballoon.org>
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Vesta, Ceres, Jupiter, AND a meteor
> To: 'Meteorite List' <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Message-ID: <1859240655.20121229203328 at spaceballoon.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

> I was out just before moon-rise trying to see if I could catch Vesta,
> Ceres, and Jupiter together.

> Just after I opened the shutter for a 6" exposure, I saw a meteoroid
> streak across the sky apparent heading towards Ain. Very short and
> dim, I hoped it'd be enough to expose at 1000ISO.

> It did! Vesta, Ceres, Jupiter, and a meteor trail in the same frame!

> Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good!

> Here it is with the red channel processed up a little bit to expose it.
> Sorry about the sky noise, I was shooting through a sucker-hole in the
> clouds and the moon was already brightening the sky. No other
> processing other than resize to 1280x1024.

> http://www.spaceballoon.org/vesta-ceres-jupiter-meteor.jpg

> (Canon 50D,17-40L _at_ 40mm,6",f/4, ISO1000, 18:37:04 - 18:37:10 PST
> [02:37 UTC])

> P.S. Pardon the annotations, I needed them for registration to find
> the darned minor planets. ;)



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--
Best regards,
 Jodie                            mailto:spacerocks at spaceballoon.org
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Received on Mon 31 Dec 2012 06:07:02 AM PST