City - Spruce Knob (4100ft above sea level :o) State - WEST VIRGINIA Country - United States
About
This photo was taken on the morning of November 18, 2001. A friend, Michael Vasseur and I travelled from Ottawa, ON to the dark hills of central West Virginia to view the Leonid meteor shower at its best. And what a show it was!!! Between 5:10am and 5:40am, I recorded an average of 40 meteors per minute!!! Sometimes with quiet moments soon followed by times when the sky seemed to explode with shooting stars in every direction. This photo was taken shortly before morning twilight. It shows 18 blue-green Leonids cutting across star trails, all on a single 8 minutes exposure! Because meteors move so fast, they need to be quite bright to even show up on film, so this gives you an indication of just how awesome the display was :)) The radiant was located just off the top-left of the photo. Due to perspective, the very short meteors at the top are seen coming almost head-on to us.
Unfortunately, the camera fell to the ground from its support on a telescope (which was supposed to provide tracking on stars). In order not to miss the best part, we just quickly setup the camera on a spare tripod and began shooting without guiding. (This explains the star trails on this picture.)
I'll never forget this night :))
Photo is combined effort by Michael F Vasseur and Pierre Martin.
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{K:1990} 5/19/2005