Adventures in Newlywedlandia: Camelopardalid Meteor Shower

Just an airplane, unfortuately

Friday night/Saturday morning was the Camelopardalid meter shower. Predictions said that it could potentially be spectacular, and the weather was cooperative so Erin and I headed out on our back patio a little after 2am to watch. Well, it wasn't as awesome as hoped, but still not bad. Erin spotted 3 meteors, while I didn't spot any. That's what I get for fiddling with my camera.

Of course, the best ones happened before the projected peak according to Astro Bob, which is a shame. I suppose the lesson is to just get out early and enjoy the clear skies (and set my camera up early too...). The good news is that I did capture some pictures of them since I left the camera out capturing continuous frames. None of the meteor pictures are really any good though, and the volume of meteors was disappointing. Making lemons out of lemonade, I did make a startrail so at least there's that. I think this is my best startrail yet. There's even a meteor pretty clearly visible in the lower right.

There was also a peculiar picture where a star appeared for one frame. I don't think it's a hot pixel, so it's a bit of a mystery to me. Here is a gif of the weirdness. It is in the middle about 1/3 of the way from the left. Ignore the blinky ones in the tree on the right, those are just being obscured by branches. If anyone has any ideas or knows what it is, please comment below!

Random Appearing Star?

Now the meteor pics. I had planned on making a composite of each meteor, but I failed with my camera remote setup and there is a 2-3 second delay between exposures so there are gaps. I would try to fix them in Photoshop, but I suck at Photoshop and that would delay this post even more. Maybe someday I'll try to learn how to do it. The 3:41am one is by far the best one, both in brightness and duration. (Times are EDT)