Observation by Alex Pratt: Sporadic meteor and alpha Her

Uploaded by

Alex Pratt

Observer

Alex Pratt

Observed

2022 Sep 12 - 20:18

Uploaded

2022 Sep 23 - 22:27

Objects

Meteor
Rasalgethi
Rasalhague

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Constellation

Ophiuchus

Field centre

RA: 17^h34^m
Dec: +05°56'
Position angle: +20°57'

Field size

50° × 29°

Equipment

IMX291 IP board camera 6mm f/0.95 lens
Raspberry Pi4
RMS software

Exposure

25 frames/sec

Location

Leeds, West Yorkshire (Bortle 7)

Target name

Sporadic meteor and alpha Her

Title

Sporadic meteor and alpha Her

About this image

Just a 'run of the mill' mag 1 sporadic meteor passing down through Oph, but it shows an interesting view of the red supergiant Rasalgethi (alpha Her), the brightest star in the field, to the right of upper centre. Visually it is currently about mag 3.5, but here it's brighter than the mag 2.1 blue-white giant Rasalhague (alpha Oph) to its left. This is due to the removal of the IR filter from the 6 mm lens (for meteor work) and the sensitivity of its sensor in red light.

The star images are slightly trailed because each composite RMS image is a stack of 256 x 0.04s frames = 10.24s. This meteor traversed two stacks which I combined to produce this image.

Files associated with this observation

20220912_201842_UK000U_ARP.jpg (206.6 kB)

Like this image

Dominic Ford, Mike Harlow, Tim Haymes

Comments

Dominic Ford, 2022 Sep 24 - 01:26 UTC

This effect has caught me by surprise a few times when trying to manually calibrate images from my Watec 902H2... what's that bright star that didn't ought to be there?! :-)

Alex Pratt, 2022 Sep 24 - 08:43 UTC

Hi Dominic,

Agreed! The Global Meteor Network discussed monitoring variable stars with a simple modification of the RMS code. These ideas haven't developed into any formal project, AFAIK.

In the spirit of George Alcock, some of the star fields in these images 'don't look right' - and a red Mira-type or semi-regular VS stands out from the others.

We discussed this with Nick James and such a setup could be useful for bright nova / transient patrolling.

Nick James, 2022 Sep 25 - 15:18 UTC

Indeed. I have been generating frames using the 10s GMN/FTP FITS files that can be used to check for transients but am still missing the automated detection that is crucial for this kind of thing. I've just posted an image of Lyra as an example here. R Lyr is about as bright as Vega.

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