Jupiter and Europa
December 16, 2001 0339 UT
0.01 second exposure, STV in zoom mode,
best sharp
Saturn
November 17, 2001 0605 UT
0.1 second exposure, STV in zoom mode,
best sharp
[ Home ] [ Great Orion Nebula (M42) ] [ Stacked Images ] [ The Earth's Moon ] [ Lunar Eclipse of November 8, 2003 ] [ Lunar Eclipse of October 27, 2004 ] [ Flyby of Asteroid 1998 WT24 ] [ Supernova 2005cs in M51 ]
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I took the images above with my STV (CCD video camera). The STV, like most astronomical CCD cameras, records in monochrome only, which is why these images are not in color. I brightened Europa in the Jupiter image using Photoshop in order to make it more visible. The image of Jupiter was taken at prime focus of my 10" f/10 LX200, while a barlow lens was used for the Saturn image.
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M13, the Great Globular Cluster in the constellation Hercules.
5 minute exposure taken at prime focus of my 10" f/10 LX-200 on June 6, 2001.
This photo was taken from my backyard.
Leonid meteor in Orion - 50 mm lens, 15 minute exposure, Nov. 18, 2001
On the night of November 17-18, 2001, the earth passed through a stream of particles left over from the passage of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Comets leave a trail of debris behind them, and when the earth passes through that debris steam, the particles burn up high in the atmosphere as meteors. On the night of November 17-18, the earth passed through a particularly dense part of the leftover stream from this comet. I watched the number of meteors steadily grow all night long, from about four per minute at 1 am, to roughly one per second by just before dawn. At that rate, this meteor shower qualifies as a meteor storm (1,000 or more meteors per hour). The meteor in this photo passed through the constellation Orion. If you look closely, you can see a brown haze near the bottom of the meteor trail. This is the "smoke trail" left over from the meteor, which was blown around by upper atmosphere winds after the meteor was long gone. I noticed that most of the Leonid meteors left trails. The brightest ones left trails that lasted for 15 minutes or more that night, and were slowly twisted around by the high-altitude winds.
This was by far the most spectacular display of meteors I have ever seen. At times, three or four meteors could be seen in the sky simultaneously.
The content in these web pages is copyright © 2007 Kevin Wigell. Any reproduction, publication, or transmission of this content without the written consent of the author is prohibited.
