Eta-Aquarids and Planets

The annual meteor shower Eta-Aquarids is just in progress and I was lucky to observe the maximum at San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Luckily, the weather is very favorable and Moon doesn’t shine when radiant rises, so I took the chance to capture this composite image. Foreground was taken on May 3rd while meteors were taken by time-lapse wide-angle photography for 11 days (from 28 April to 8 May). The view of the shower caused by Halley’s comet was very nicely supplemented by a wonderful planetary parade in the Zodiacal Light. Foreground was captured on Canon Ra, Samyang 24mm, f2.8, ISO 10000, a panorama of single 15s exposures from a tripod. Meteors were taken on 2 cameras Canon 6D (modified) and 12mm, f2.8, ISO 8000, and registered to the background image. Panorama contains 94 meteors in total. The brightest ones also with persistent trains (which lasted always around 5 minutes). I would like to acknowledge Josef Kujal of the Astronomy Society of Hradec Králové for his deep support of the meteors photography.

Eta-Aquarids and Planets – Annotated

Enjoy the virtual reality…

And here comes another shots of the amazing annual Eta-Aquarid meteor shower, which had very good conditions for observing this year with a peak around 6th May. The images contain 84 meteors captured during the last 11 days (from 28 April to 8 May). The view of the shower caused by Halley’s comet was very nicely supplemented by a wonderful planetary parade in the Zodiacal Light. In fact, the Zodiacal Light is caused pretty much by a similar type of particles like the meteor shower itself–the interplanetary matter from comets, asteroids, and dust of Mars (which is also in the image). As observation was made close by the Tropic of Capricorn, Zodiacal Light and its antisolar point called Gegenshein were projected along the ecliptic (also with the planets) from Eastern to Western Horizon through the zenith. What a view!