by Chris Peterson » Fri May 10, 2019 1:02 pm
De58te wrote: ↑Fri May 10, 2019 10:43 am
Another composite photo! If meteor showers looked like that I'd be pleased. But they don't. If I go out to see the shower on the peak night I'd be lucky to see one in 5 minutes. Usually I am looking in the wrong direction. For example if I was looking at the tree in the photo I would have missed the one at the top. Then ten minutes later the one over the tree would have shown but I had been looking up to the top because I thought I had seen movement out of the corner of my eye. Twenty meteors in 2 hours seems right though, because if they occurred with mathematical frequency, that is 10 an hour, 5 in 30 minutes, or 1 meteor every 6 minutes. Six minutes is a long time just starring up in the sky. If I am out there for 15 minutes, I finally see one. Ooh! There it is, seen it let's go back inside.
Yup. Dedicated meteor watching requires a certain passion, and it's a learned skill. I prefer to let my cameras catch meteors. Like you, I usually go outside and watch for a while, and am happy to see one or two. But I do know a couple of serious visual meteor observers. They will lie outside all night, looking straight up, and catch almost every meteor bright enough to be seen, no matter where it is in the sky. They'll record its radiant, its color, its brightness, its light profile.
(I recall the Leonids in 2001, where you could see 20-30 meteors in 5 or 10 seconds. Visually, that shower resembled today's composite. Sometimes there were three of four meteors in the sky at the same time.)
[quote=De58te post_id=292115 time=1557485014 user_id=141631]
Another composite photo! If meteor showers looked like that I'd be pleased. But they don't. If I go out to see the shower on the peak night I'd be lucky to see one in 5 minutes. Usually I am looking in the wrong direction. For example if I was looking at the tree in the photo I would have missed the one at the top. Then ten minutes later the one over the tree would have shown but I had been looking up to the top because I thought I had seen movement out of the corner of my eye. Twenty meteors in 2 hours seems right though, because if they occurred with mathematical frequency, that is 10 an hour, 5 in 30 minutes, or 1 meteor every 6 minutes. Six minutes is a long time just starring up in the sky. If I am out there for 15 minutes, I finally see one. Ooh! There it is, seen it let's go back inside.
[/quote]
Yup. Dedicated meteor watching requires a certain passion, and it's a learned skill. I prefer to let my cameras catch meteors. Like you, I usually go outside and watch for a while, and am happy to see one or two. But I do know a couple of serious visual meteor observers. They will lie outside all night, looking straight up, and catch almost every meteor bright enough to be seen, no matter where it is in the sky. They'll record its radiant, its color, its brightness, its light profile.
(I recall the Leonids in 2001, where you could see 20-30 meteors in 5 or 10 seconds. Visually, that shower resembled today's composite. Sometimes there were three of four meteors in the sky at the same time.)