Geminids 2023 and friends (Behnam Darvish)

Geminids 2023 and friends

Geminids 2023, along with some other coordinated meteors from Leonis Minorids and/or Comae Berenicids, and some sporadics.

For this year's Geminids, I chose to go to a Bortle 2ish site, the Trona Pinnacles, to enjoy the shower visually and increase my chances of capturing it through imaging. The Trona Pinnacles are unusual geological features that formed underwater until approximately 10,000 years ago on the bedrock of the now-dried Searles Lake. Accessible via a long, rough, and partly sandy dirt road, the whole time I had concerns about potential flat tires or getting stuck in the sand. Had I known the condition of the road, I would not have gone there. In retrospect, the experience was worth the worry, as the night was filled with a meteor shower party, and I observed possibly a few hundred meteors.

For imaging, I tried two setups—a full-frame camera and an untracked crop-C setup. The image you see here is from the crop-C camera, showcasing around 60 meteors, predominantly Geminids, with a possibility of Leonis Minorids and/or Comae Berenicids. Mounted on a tripod, the camera captured a sequence of 20-second exposures(510x20 sec) facing North. The sky background reference frame is a stack of 9x20-second frames, while the foreground is a single 1-minute exposure taken at the same location, slightly angled towards the ground to better show the captivating Trona Pinnacles. Meteor frames were registered with respect to the sky reference frame using Astro Pixel Processor and were added to the background with the help of masks in GIMP. I still need time (and space) to delve into my other dataset, a considerable amount of data to go through. A quick scan of the full-frame data shows a probable 100+ meteors.

All in all, it was an unforgettable night in the middle of nowhere. Enjoy!

Original
Final
B

B

Description: some level adjustment

Uploaded: ...

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	n/a
Started	n/a
Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):