Observation by Nick James: High resolution Geminid meteor
Uploaded by
Nick James
Observer
Nick James
Observed
2025 Dec 13 - 22:29
Uploaded
2025 Dec 15 - 19:26
Objects
Meteor
Equipment
- Sony A7s iii + 85mm, f/1.2 lens
Exposure
1/25s 25fps
Location
Chelmsford
Target name
Geminid
Title
High resolution Geminid meteor
About this image
This event was caught on 4K video on Geminid maximum night. This is a crop of the original video downsampled by a factor of 2. The original full resolution full sized and cropped videos are here and here. This GIF consists of 110 frames taken from the original 25fps video (i.e. around 4.5s duration). The FoV is 15 x 5 deg and the original video has a resolution of 23.2 arcsec/pixel which is approximately 15m/pixel on the plane-of-sky at a distance of 130km. The video shows the bright, ablating meteoroid as a streak due to the 1/25s shutter speed leaving behind an ionised train which is quickly distorted by high-altitude winds.
Files associated with this observation
Like this image
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Comments
Superb but please don't flaunt your Section Director memory allowance at us mere mortals. 22.6MB? Have you any idea how many iterations I have to go through to hit my humble 10MB limit?
Steve - Indeed. Until the revolution comes it is one of the privileges of being a section director.
Animated GIFs are hugely inefficient. The full sized version of this is 168MB as an animated GIF, only 17MB as an equivalent quality MP4. Are there any modern equivalents to animated GIFs that are supported by web browsers and this website? I think webp is supposed to be a more efficient replacement but not sure whether this website supports it or how good it is.
Use your power wisely young Padawan!
Good question, been playing around with APNG's. Quality seems better but uses even more memory. 800x800 51 frame Geminid was 21.3MB, GIF of same was 17.8MB. Oh and I could only open it in Firefox.
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