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Photographer,
Location |
Images |
Comments |
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Jaroslaw
Dygos, Polish Fireball Network,
Czernice Borowe, 100km north of Warsaw, Poland Dec. 15, 2007 |
#1,
more |
"A
gorgeous -13 magnitude Geminid fireball was observed last
night over Poland. The meteoroid fragmented into 4 pieces
and observers heard a sonic boom similar to distant thunder,"
says Jaroslaw Dygos of the Polish
Fireball Network whose CCTV camera recorded the explosion.
"Look at the halo around the fireball," he points
out. That was caused by meteor-light passing through ice
crystals in the clouds--"beautiful!"
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[MOVIE+SOUND]
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Thomas
Ashcraft,
New Mexico
Dec. 16, 2007 |
movie,
more |
Just as the shower was dying
down on Dec. 16th, a strange sound echoed from the loudspeaker
of Thomas Ashcraft's
radio telescope in New Mexico. "A bright fireball was
flying overhead," he says. The sound was a distant
TV transmitter reflected from the fireball's ionized trail.
He combined footage of the fireball with a recording of
the echo to produce this
movie. Don't forget to turn up the volume!
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Tom A. Warner,
Rapid City, SD, USA Dec. 12, 2007 |
#1,
more |
I captured a bright Geminid fireball on the night of 12/12/07 (12/13/07-0654:51 UT). I had a Astrovid Stellacam EX black and white video camera with Computar 2.6mm f1.0 lens recording the night sky. When I reviewed the video, I was shocked to see the bright meteor. When I showed the video to my wife, she remembered seeing a bright flash that night that lit up the backyard and wondered if there was lightning in the area.
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Calvin Hall,
Palmer, Alaska
Dec. 14, 2007 |
#1,
more |
Very nice meteor
shower. I was trying to decide whether to go out at 1 AM
on the 14th and shoot the Geminids. After seeing 4 from
my bed in about 10 minutes, I had to get out there. This
composite was made from 50 minutes worth of shooting w my
24 mm lens. There is also a very slight green glow from
the aurora peeking over the mountains. |
To
view more images, visit gallery pages 1,
2 and 3.
Geminid
Anecdotes:
In Reno,
Nevada, on Dec. 15th, James Mangum "sprawled
out in the snow and counted more than 80 meteors in an hour. One
rust-colored fireball lasted nearly 4 seconds as it crossed the
sky, leaving bits and pieces in its path. Others were quite bright
and blue in color. Great shower!"
"The
Geminids were terriffic tonight (Dec. 15th)," reports airline
pilot Dan Wood. "I just finished a trip
from New Orleans and we got to watch the show
through the airplane's windows. At times there were three or more
Geminids per minute with seven or eight really bright green ones.
I even saw a few while on the ground in Las Vegas--not
the darkest place on the planet!"
"Reading
your reports from the mainland indicated a modest shower. We got
a much better show out here in the Pacific on the Big
Island of Hawai’i," says Andrew Cooper,
an electrical engineer at the W.M. Keck Observatory. "We
did two semi-formal counts and arrived at numbers either side
of 200ZHR, 216zhr at about 4:11am HST (14:11UTC), the second was
192zhr at about 04:40 HST (14:40 UTC). It was a pretty good show,
plenty of bright meteors and a few with short lived trains. We
also had several bright meteors apparently from another shower
(Coma Berneicids?) in addition to the usual sporadics."
"I was
up today morning (Friday 14th) in San Francisco,
in Ocean Beach, from 5:00 to 6:00 AM, and I saw close to 10 shooting
stars," reports Vladimir Sanchez. "It
was very cool to wake up at 4:40 AM, get dressed and go with my
wife and our 4 year old to see the marvelous starry sky in the
morning. We'll be there next year!"
"I am
located about 80 miles north of San Francisco
in a rural dark-sky area and I thought the Geminids this year
were pretty good," says Sheldon Heitz. "The
display was bursty--that is, there would be periods of good activity
(2 – 3 per minute) for a couple of minutes, then it would
drop off to almost nothing for 30 minutes or more. I spent a total
of three hours viewing, 12 – 1 am, 2 – 3 am, and 4
– 5 am (way too cold to last more than an hour at a time
outdoors). The two later sessions were the best, with 5 or 6 good
long bright white fireballs. In between were the usual fainter
short streaks that would be difficult to see in light polluted
locations. The only better show I have seen was the Leonid storm
of several years ago, but this was certainly nothing close to
comparing to that one!"
Martin
Mc Kenna of Maghera, Co. Derry, N. Ireland: "My
friend Conor Mc Donald and I watched the shower on Saturday night
from the countryside near our homes in N. Ireland. We had to wait
under 4 hours of cloud before the first clear breaks appeared
but when they did we were rewarded with some treat. We ended up
observing 137 Geminids and the vast majority of these were in
the mag +0 and -1 range. We seen a rich number of fireballs with
5 of these reaching -6 to -7 green, white and gold in colour as
they lit up the clouds from behind. At 05.00 I saw 5 fireballs
fall into the eastern sky one behind the other as they fanned
out from the radiant. We reckoned that we witnessed 1 - 2 per
minute and this was many hours after the predicted peak. This
was not only the best Geminid meteor shower I have ever seen but
the best meteor shower out of all the annual showers in over 10
years of observing. - What a night!"
"Our
family agrees," reports Bill Garske of Fond du Lac,
Wisconsin. "it's best meteor shower we've seen.
We are seeing huge trails."
"I would
like to report 147 meteors between 2:17am and 3:45am on Dec. 14th,"
says Luis Irizarry of Quebradillas, Puerto Rico.
"I was planning a longer night but severe rain and bad weather
conditions prohibited us from spending more time watching."
"I was
out last night near Louisburg, Kansas from 11:00
p.m. (12/13) until 12:30 a.m. (12/14) and counted more than 70
Geminids and 6 non-Geminids," says Carolyn Karns.
"Five of the Geminids I saw left smoke trails that lasted
a few seconds. The sky was cloudless, but when fog rolled in,
I called it a night. It wasn't the best Geminid shower I've ever
seen, but I was not disappointed."
"I was
with my family up near Wrightwood, CA,"
reports Brian Martin. "The sky was so clear
and moonless--the night was awesome! Arrived at the site at 1230
am on Dec. 14th and we all counted in an hour 300 meteors. About
80% of the meteors were about as bright as vega, magnitude 0.
The brightest seen was about as bright as the planet venus, magnitude
-4. All in all, we had a GREAT time. Stayed up watching for only
an hour, cause it was plenty cool. The shower was amazing and
sometimes we saw three at a time!"
"I observed
the Geminids from 12:58 AM until 1:15 AM PST from my backyard
in San Diego, California." says Evan
Zucker. "Gemini was nearly at the zenith, and the
sky was clear. I
was pleasantly surprised to observe nearly one Geminid per minute
even though I could only see about one-half of the sky from my
location. If my suburban location had been darker and if I did
not have as much sky obstruction due to houses and trees, it seems
likely I would have seen more than one per minute."
Gregg
M. Pasterick: "My wife and I are vacationing on
Maui, and we've been so busy, we were too tired
for a full fledged Geminid watch. We did, however, sit out on
our patio last night from about 9:45 HST until 10:15. In that
half hour, with only about 1/3 of the sky available, a limiting
magnitude of about +5.0, and the low elevation of the radiant
(30 degrees? I couldn't see it; it was behind the house), I counted
20 Geminids. All those factors indicate a ZHR of better than 120
meteors per hour! Most were bright bobs of light. And it seems
to me the shower was well on its way to a nice peak... "
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