A Big Day!
August 12, a big day for astronomy here. A solar eclipse, a meteor shower, various galaxies, and first up, Comet 220P/McNaught. This is an overlay of the images taken on 11 and 12 August, showing how much the comet has moved in 25 hours:
The times are of the first frame in each case. The comets themselves look a bit different because they had different exposures, gains and mounts (which meant one had to be rotated to align the stars).
And now, the partial solar eclipse. In Leeds this ran from 18:12 to 20:03, with the maximum coverage of 92% of the Sun at 19:09.
Here I’ve collaged a selection of the 429 pictures the Mini took, using its Burst mode of a photo every 15 seconds. As I couldn’t get off work I had to set the scope up on the roof of the library (with permission!) and set it running during my break.
There were a couple of minor problems. The focus went a bit off at one point (probably due to the Mini running very hot), but you can refocus during Burst mode so could be fixed. And at about 19:15 I noticed that the Sun (still being eclipsed) was about to disappear behind a building, so I halted the shoot, moved the camera and restarted capturing. I only lost about 2 minutes, so not a disaster.
The final collage image shows the Sun disappearing behind the roof garden of a local pub; I wasn’t able to get the last stages of the eclipse.
The central image is a higher resolution picture of the Sun taken at quarter to six, just before the main shoot started. Sadly there are only a few small sunspots.
Later was the maximum of the annual Perseids meteor shower. Here’s a star trails covering 4 hours from about 11:30:
We caught a couple of Perseids, plus sporadics, aircraft and satellites. Here are a couple of close-ups of some of the meteors. The scope was pointing straight up.
And so to bed…