On the late evening of August 19, I picked up Nicholas Zuger, we loaded all the scope and camera gear in my car, and off we went to Bootland Farm. This night was more of test run of equipment, and doing some casual imaging. The sky was affected by poor transparency (1/5) due to forest fire smoke, but I managed to capture 21P/Giacobini-Zinner (3 weeks before perihelion), M31, Double Cluster and M45. I was not doing any guiding, so these are very short exposures at quite a high ISO setting on my Canon 6D. Details under each photo:
https://pmartin.smugmug.com/Astronomy/20180819-Astro-imaging-Bootland-Farm/
I also did a short one hour meteor watch before dawn. The Perseids were weakly active, below the sporadic background.
August 19/20 2018, 07:45-08:45 UT (03:45-04:45 EDT)
Location: Bootland Farm (Stewartville), Ontario, Canada
(Long: -76 deg 29′; Lat: 45 deg 23′)
Observed showers:
kappa Cygnids (KCG) – 19:16 (289) +55
Anthelion (ANT) – 22:36 (339) -09
Northern delta Aquariids (NDA) – 23:28 (352) +04
Southern Delta Aquariids (SDA) – 23:58 (359) -09
eta Eridanids (ERI) – 03:24 (051) -10
Perseids (PER) – 03:46 (057) +59
07:45-08:45 UT (03:45-04:45 EDT); 10% clouds during last 30 min; 1/5 trans; F 1.05; LM 6.09; facing S60 deg; teff 1.00 hr
PER: four: +2; +3(2); +5
KCG: one: +4
Sporadics: six: +3; +4(4); +5
Total meteors: Eleven
It was really nice heaving Nicholas company on this outing! Nicholas managed to get a really good close-up shot of 21P with a 100ED refractor and a Canon 7D II. It was also Nicholas’ first outing with scope and imaging gear in a dark sky!
Clear skies,
Pierre Martin
Ottawa, Ontario
