The introduction. A hearty band of astro-gazers converged on my friend's property out by Jackson Michigan and froze our keisters waiting to observe the Leonid meteor shower. Every 33 years there is the possibility of a major storm (thousands of meteors an hour). Over Europe and the Middle East, there was a major storm, but by the time it got to us, it was not that major. We saw about 30 meteors in the course of about 4 hours, from 11:00 AM to 3:00 AM. Some were quite spectacular, but some were faint, and we luckily had a dark sky (once that silly moon went below the horizon).
Photography. I had almost a thousand dollars of photgraphy equipment set up in preparation for this. This included three cameras on tripods. I had heaters attached to each of the lenses to keep the dew and frost off the lenses. I had a portable power supply to run the heaters. I was ready .. but I did not have any practice in this kind of event. The results showed that - I ONLY GOT ONE METEOR ON ONE FRAME OF FILM!
Here is the shot! You can see the stars trailing in the curved paths, and then the one streak that is moving in a different direction (in the center of the shot), that is the meteor path (bascially coming out of the constellation LEO - hence the name of the shower). The North Star (Polaris) is off the photo to the left in the image, and the constellation Leo is off the photo to the lower right. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) [Note, this is a reversed image, black for white .. thus the star/meteor trails will appear black in the image with the "dark" sky being white.]
It was still good! Having done my complaining about all the time, all the equipment, all the frozen body parts (I just thawed out about 2 hours ago) ... it was definitely worth it! We got to see an event that won't happen for another 33 years. We also shared the communal suffering of the cold with good grace and only a few jabs at my inability to affect the heavens to speed up the rising of Leo. Also, when we watched the meteors, we had the full knowledge and appreciation of what were were seeing -- it was not that long ago that events like this were treated with fear and suspicion!
Other links :
See some information about the Mercury Transit or the pictures from the transit.