HUGE fireball over BuckSnort!

Last night (11:47 pm, June 20, 2011) I caught a HUGE fireball on my meteor camera at BuckSnort Observatory in Central Texas. This was certainly the biggest meteor I have captured so far.

The video sequence was captured using a Watec video camera, f/0.8 lens, and UFOCapture software.

See the video here:
http://vimeo.com/25424644

Milk & Dish

We had clear skies on the Saturday night before TSP officially began, so I took the opportunity to revisit a favorite location -- the VLBA Radio Telescope just a few hundred yards from where Kim and I were staying at the Sproul Ranch.

This year I chose to try a 3 panel panorama with the Milky Way arching to the dish (like a galactic rainbow leading to the pot-o-gold). This was shot with my Nikon D700, 12-24mm lens, on a tripod. Each 3 exposures were 45 seconds, then stitched together using Photomerge in CS5.

Playing with FIRE

I went to the Texas Star Party last week and once again had a great time. The only thing missing were the stars! We only had 2 clear nights out of the week, but we did have wildfires (and thankfully no one was hurt). This made for some interesting photo opportunities.

I went out late one night with my buddy Vance and I shot the Milky Way as it appeared through a hole in the smoke and clouds.

The next night the fires were still burning (and even larger) and I took Kim up into the mountains to see the flames. We made our way up to the top of the McDonald observatory and I was surprised to see the shutter open on the 107" dome and the astronomers still hard at work -- the fire was only about 3 miles away!

Although I did not manage to finish an 8 panel mosaic I started, it was still a great week. I even won the TSP astrophoto awards : )