Each year
about 12 August Earth intersects orbit of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle and debris
from this comet which is distributed all along the orbit, enters Earth’s
atmosphere, burning in a form of meteors. They appear from a radiant in the
constellation of Perseus and are therefore called Perseids. Some years they
produce very active showers. In 2005 the activity was below average, nevertheless
some very bright and beautiful meteors could be seen.
One distiguished event happened about 4:38 local time when a very
bright fireball exploded and left a smoke trail which was visible on photos
for several minutes before it was dispersed by wind. [ JPEG
| TIFF ]
To capture this event, a simple photographic setup was placed
in a quiet place next to the JKT telescope. It comprised of the Canon 350D digital
camera, the Peleng 8 mm/f3.5 fish eye lens and a photographic tripod. The camera
was controlled by a computer to take images every 30 seconds. Many interesting
meteors were photographed and from the photos an animation was created, showing
dark La Palma sky lit by the Milky Way and occasional bright meteors. The photos
and the animation are available from http://www.ing.iac.es/~jure/perseids2005/.
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