Pleiades-Venus-Meteor Conjunction 4/5/2020

[Hankmeister3]

I had a weather window tonight and I really wanted to grab a few frames of the Venus-M45 Pleiades conjunction +Day 1 since I didn't have the sky for it yesterday when Venus made its closest pass by the Seven Sisters. It was girls night out, alright! Intruder alert! Some heavy metal bad boy crashed the party, however he turned out to be just another flash in the pan to the dismay of the ladies in attendance.

This was the 18th of 20 frames I took tonight of the +Day 1 conjunction and I noted the meteor immediately when the post-view popped up on the camera's LCD screen.

This meteor must have been really tumbling given the somewhat erratic path it took through Earth's atmosphere before it burned up. The enlargements show not only a shower of "sparks" coming off the meteor but also some ionized gases … I think. Maybe someone more familiar with these kind of meteor images has a better story to tell.

I also was able to burn through about fifty frames getting some images of Luna in its current phase. I'll sort through them this afternoon and I might post one on the Lunar forum if it's a good single-frame capture.

Unfortunately the clock time on this camera is not correct. I believe the meteor event happened some time around 9:00. Maybe someone else in the world captured it too and has a more accurate time of this bit of celestial serendipity. Okay, there's a good bit of predictable celestial mechanics going on in this photo, too.

Meade 70mm f/5 Quadruplet astrograph
Canon EOS 77D DSLR unmodified
SW EQ6-R Pro (PPEC + Sidereal tracking only)
18.7 seconds, ISO 400
Single-frame, no filter
No post-production, virgin image

[Graeme1858]

That's a right result catching the meteor, celestial serendipity indeed!

Nice conjunction too.

Regards

Graeme

[Hankmeister3]

Thank you, Graeme.

BTW, I did a time check on my camera's date/time stamp in the metadata by using my cellphone clock as a check and it turns out the time is correct … within so many seconds. Apparently what happened is the camera's daylight savings time feature wasn't switched on so it was still on the "old time." What also threw me was the round number … "8:00", I just didn't think one would capture a meteor exactly (or almost exactly) at the top of the hour.

I think I'll post a Stakker-lite version of this image that will add a few more stars and maybe tame the brightness of Venus without affecting the meteor image too much. Hope springs eternal!

In the meantime this single-frame will have to do.

[Hankmeister3]

Here's a 6-stack, 3-layer Stakker-Lite version of this Venus-M45-Meteor conjunction. It brings out the stars more (sorry, no nebulosity without totally blowing out Venus plus Bortle 7 Moon-Sky glow. Transparency was well below average (almost non-existent from what my Mark 1 eyeballs were telling me), below average seeing conditions - Pickering 3, but then what else is new? I'm just happy to have grabbed this frame.

Stakker-Lite specs:
Data time was 66 seconds total for all six frames. I probably tweaked a bit too much in post-production, but imo it's an acceptable short stack image with no flats, darks, or bias frames. Close examination of the meteor trail reveals much color and fine detail was lost in the stacking process since I had only one frame with the meteor image in it … of course! For much better color and detail check out the original single-stack (no post-production) middle cropped photo. There is some very subtle color from the meteor's ionized gasses/plasma trail … or whatever was actually going on in the E-region of the ionosphere.

[Mac]

Very nice Henry... that is one fat meteorite trail. I only saw a few while waiting for guiding to lock but none showed up in any of my images.

[yobbo89]

i love it ! the best conjunction so far ! it looks like you can see some gasy plooms coming of the meteor .

[Hankmeister3]

Very nice Henry... that is one fat meteorite trail. I only saw a few while waiting for guiding to lock but none showed up in any of my images.

Yeah, I've had the same experience while waiting out the slack in my drive, Mac. It usually takes about 45 to 60 seconds for the drive to "catch up" and then I'm good to go.

Last year I had just captured a beautiful image of the Eagle Nebula and seconds after I ended the exposure, I happened to be looking right at that area of the sky and an even bigger, fatter meteor zipped right through the region. It actually left a green ionized trail that persisted for about 15 seconds. I'm not sure exactly how close to M16 it would have been and if it would have been within the frame, but it was really close.

I guess the only thing lacking in this image capture is a satellite track and jetliner lights tracking through the field! Now that would be super-duper-extra-ordinary!

[Don Quixote]

Nice one Henry.

[Larry 1969]

So cool!

Larry

[Kerry C.]

Great photo. And catching that meteor is sure a bonus! Thanks for sharing.
Kerry

[Lady Fraktor]

What a great image!
Definitely a rare view

[Hankmeister3]

Nice one Henry.

Thanks, Mark. Were you out doing some visual last night?. It really wasn't that nice of a sky, I thought.

You know, when I think about it more now, after reviewing the track of that meteor above under some magnification, I think it was "knuckleballing" it's way through the atmosphere despite the shortness of its actual burn through the ionosphere. That would mean it had very little spin to stabilize its mass, much like a bullet/lead ball out of a smooth bore rifle instead of out of a rifled barrel.

If the meteor had any angular momentum (spin on its natural axis) it probably would have taken a straighter path before burning up. I know there are issues of vectoring, aerodynamic pressures and all that other good stuff about celestial mechanics my brain no longer process since my last astronomy class at the University of Houston 45 years ago, but I always wondered if a big enough rock (for a long burn) was to enter Earth's upper atmosphere slow enough and shallow enough entry angle with a good bit of spin on it, if it would create a curved meteoric plasma track in the sky … like a curveball in baseball. I think relatively slow-moving high-altitude fireballs sometimes follow a curve going in and coming out of Earth's atmosphere, but I believe that's more gravitational than it is spin. Hmmmmm?

[Hankmeister3]

Thank you, Lady Fractor, Larry and Kerry.

Lady Fractor, did you have opportunity to visually observe the Pleiades/Venus conjunction? If so, did you observe any movement on the part of Venus during an extended observing time?

I bet a time-lapse video would have been pretty cool. Does anyone know if some APer has posted such a video on TSS?

[Gordon]

Congratulations Henry on having your image selected as todays TSS APOD!

app.php/article/4-7-2020-astrophotograp ... of-the-day

[Bigzmey]

Nice catch Henry!

[Makuser]

Hello Henry. This is the best Venus/Pleiades image that I have seen on here. The seven sisters woke up to an interloper here in your image. Thanks for sharing these captures on here Henry, and congratulations on winning the TSS APOD Award today.

[Juno16]

Super job Henry!

You really caught a right place at the right time view with the meteor!

Very nice image. As Bob would put it. For “The Wall Of Fame”.

[helicon]

Amazing Henry. I don't know how you managed to pull it off but you did. Kudos to you for winning today's APOD.

[Hankmeister3]

Congratulations Henry on having your image selected as todays TSS APOD!

app.php/article/4-7-2020-astrophotograp ... of-the-day

Thank you Gordon. I'm honored to have my image selected. I guess a meteor can be a man's (or woman's) best friend! Heh!

I really do appreciate the honor especially in view of all the wonderful images showing up on the TSS forum since I posted mine!

Clear skies to everyone. We have some hopefully nice skies here in flyover country in another five days.

[TheButcher]

Great image Henry, You should get that printed and framed!