SOLAR ECLIPSE 2017

Location:  Truck stop in Peticodiac, NB, Canada

Date Time:  August 21, 2017 1500-1700hrs.

Weather:  Breezy, partly cloudy to mostly cloudy, 25C.

Equipment:  Canadian Telescopes 80 ED/APO attached to a Vixen Alt/Az mount, 12mm eyepiece, Cellphone adapter and a Samsung Nexus 5 cellphone camera.

Attendance:  Six people who happened to be in the area at the time and myself.

Objective:  To view and image the partial solar eclipse which was happening on this day from approx 1400-1700hrs.

Report:

• A truly amazing sight in the eye piece, with many sunspots across the face of the Sun.  Interesting how the Moon and the Sun are almost exactly the same size, from our viewpoint, in the sky.
• Six passerby's came over to view the eclipse through the telescope. All were very impressed.  One man said, amazed, "The old lady ain't going to believe this!"

Images and Videos:

GEMINIDS 2017

Location:  Backyard Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time:  December 14, 2017 0310-0356hrs

Weather:  Partly to mostly cloudy, gusting winds moving to just north of east, -10C.

Attendance:  Myself.

Equipment:  Canon Rebel DSLR with 18-55mm lens on tripod.

Objective:  To observe as many Geminid meteors as possible during peak hour for this shower, which was reported to be between 0300-0400hrs on this morning.

Report:  Very dark skies with no Moon showing at this time.  Clouds were a factor, covering one part of the sky then another, but moved on quickly, and they were partially see-through.  No dew issue with camera, took many pictures.  Captured four geminids in four separate images.

Geminids came in bursts of two or three at a time and at one time the sky seemed to full of them, around 0340hrs.  Counted 32 Geminids with only 1 Sporadic.  Geminids were mostly quite bright, blue/white moving medium speed and medium brightness.  A few fainter ones, and two very bright ones.  One very very long and bright and left a smoke trail, to the right of Polaris.  Most observed were in the northern sky, between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia.

Seemed, on average, there was about 1 Geminid/min.  Best meteor shower I've seen in since the early 90s.

Geminid streaking past Polaris.

Facing southwest with Orion behind the big tree.

Note:  Images of shooting stars turned out much fainter than what was observed for some reason.