Geminids 2015

[BillW]

Hi,

The observing conditions looked to be very favourable this year so after the success of previous years I decided to take a short winter break and go back to Tenerife.

The weather was again very favourable with several nights of clear skies. Even the cloudier nights weren't completely useless.

After many years of trying I finally managed to get a "photographic" spectrum. Not particularly good and not a Geminid, also almost impossible to reduce due to the stars (I might try some filtering techniques) but nonetheless a few bright lines show up.

There are some blue emissions possibly magnesium with a strong green lines also possibly magnesium. The other green lines are most likely iron and the reddy/orange line is probably sodium.



I also caught the fireball on my (near) allsky camera too. Here's a crop from the full frame.



cheers,
Bill.

[BillW]

A quick time lapse from the all sky camera

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL_emFIjSPM

[BillW]

Hi,
I also planned to observe some comets when I was on Tenerife but finally decided not to take the tracking mount.
I had however looked up the positions of some comets and thought I would try to see if I could record them with simple untracked static exposures.
Much to my surprise I got two of them quite easily! These were both single 30 secs exposures with a 50mm f1.4 lens at ISO 1600



Comet C/2014 S2 PanSTARRS. Around mag +10 (also quite low down and even with the hint of a tail perhaps...!)



Comet C/2013 X1 PanSTARRS. Around mag +9

Due to fatigue and cloud in the later parts of the night I never got to see C/2013US10 Catalina
cheers,
Bill.