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[scottmason]

Here's my overdue report for the Geminids I came to see at Conway.

I took off around 7pm from Chicago, and arrived at Conway Observatory around 830pm. Paulie escorted me down the right path, and introduced me to the folks hanging out on the concrete pad. I got the grand tour of the observatory, and then got to work with my imaging setup.
As I was setting up my scope doing aligment stars and collimation, I had my camera going on my tripod snapping shots here and there and hoping to get a meteor.
Here's one of the only ones I got.



All the while there were lots of "OOH! OOH! AH!"s from the crowd outside. I told Paulie that he sounded like he was stepping on nails.

If you kept your head up, you'd be sure to see one in under a minute, sometimes up to 3 in a row. I didn't see any enormous fireballs like I did during the Perseids but I probably caught over 30 and my head was aimed down at my telescope most of the night!

Here are some wide view shots, attempts to catch meteors.



Orion with the (faint) winter Milky Way




Now here's a shot through my telescope. The tracking didn't work well on this exposure, hence the streaks for stars. There isn't much I can do to confirm this but I'm pretty sure a meteor flew past the view of my scope while I was taking an exposure! I showed it to a couple other people that night who brushed it off as probably my headlamp shining into my scope. However, I took a few more shots and shined my headlamp directly into the scope at all angles and the result didn't look anything like this. I THINK I was lucky enough to have a meteor fly by my narrow FOV!
Note the hot white core fading from orange to red.



Here are some M42s. One in B&W and a couple more in color. The first two are stacked to reduce noise.



The Running Man Nebula above
farm9.staticflickr.com/8347/8279508015_aa2a4bf4a8_b.jpg [/img]

The Triangulum Galaxy



The Flaming Star Nebula


A composite of 3 images for M42, so that I could expose the trapezium as well as the rest of the nebula without it getting blown out white in the middle.



In a false color green



The Pleiades





Here are some shots of Conway







Orion and Conway





It was a treat to have a spot where you can warm up while shooting.
I also met a very talented astrophotographer whom I learned a lot from.

Thanks for reading!

[Paulie pchris00]

Nice shots.

Where was all the red light by the telescope coming from? Did I leave one of my lights up there?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

These are very nice shots Scott.

That orange meteor shot is interesting.

What eyepiece was it and what were you attempting to capture?

I have yet to make the trek to the Conway, but hope too in the spring.

[Paulie pchris00]

Jan 10, 2013 17:07:52 GMT -6 Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe said:

I have yet to make the trek to the Conway, but hope too in the spring.

Finally?

[Paulie pchris00]

I totally forgot that we were seeing the winter Milky Way. Thanks for the reminder. That was the first time I can remember seeing it. Definitely not as bright as the summer Milky Way, and was so cool to see.

[scottmason]

Joe, I was shooting at the Pleiades I believe but it could have been one of the other targets.
My camera was mounted directly to the rear of my scope through a focal reducer. When it's in that setup, my focal length becomes 600mm. I don't know what a meteor would look like at that focal length but I imagine it would be very bright.