The 2009 Leonids were being touted as the best in years—and the sky was clear—so of course I stayed up to see them. I set the tripod up on the deck and fired up Stellarium to get oriented.
By midnight I hadn’t seen more than one or two small meteorites. I set the alarm for what was supposed to be the peak at our location (05:30!) but only saw a single flash in ten minutes or so.
However, it wasn’t a total loss. Compare the screen capture from Stellarium to my shot from the deck. The stars in the constellation of Orion are right on—and both Sirius and Rigel show very distinctly.
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| Screen capture from Stellarium for 2009-11-16 23:40:21 looking SE |
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| Photograph taken 2009-11-16 23:40:16 looking SE |
The Nikon D300 camera was set at ISO800, f5.6 for a 30 second exposure. The glow on the horizon is light from Ottawa—so this truly is a view from this end of the Escarpment!
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