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The Geminid Fireball
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Honorable mention in the 2023 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category of Still images taken exclusively with smartphones/mobile devices.
Captured with a smartphone on 13 December 2022, a Geminid meteor illuminated the sky above Blue Moon Valley in Yunnan, China, casting a breathtaking display against the serene backdrop of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Renowned for their dazzling brightness and vivid hues, the Geminids are among the most vibrant meteor showers, originating from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. Each year, as our planet traverses Phaethon’s debris trail, fragments of dust and rock vaporise in the atmosphere, creating the stunning phenomenon of the Geminid meteor shower. In this stunning night sky image, the twin stars of Gemini (Castor and Pollux) are obscured by the silhouetted trees on the left. Mirrored in the calm waters are the stars that make up the constellation of Orion, which can be seen rising towards the bottom-centre of the image, while the radiant Mars retains its brilliance as the foremost celestial beacon in the scene, all before the moonrise takes over.
Credit: Jianfeng Dai/IAU OAE (CC BY 4.0)
Glosar de termeni:
Gemini , Shooting Star
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
, Solar System
Tags:
astrophotography
License: Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 15.06 MB)
Lyrid of the Lake
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Winner in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns.
Taken in the early hours of 24 April 2022, this image captures the sky of Yunnan Province, China, with a reflection on Lake Nian. The Milky Way is visible on the left side, while whitish Earth clouds are visible on the right. A Lyrid meteor crosses the sky along the Milky Way, its tail pointing back toward the shower's radiant in the constellation Lyra, which lies outside the image above the upper edge. The natural colours of the meteor are impressively clear.
A few constellations are also visible. In the top left corner we can recognise the small constellation of the Dolphin, in which five brightest stars comprise the asterism. This asterism forms the head-part of the larger Greek constellation of the Dolphin and was considered the Dolphin since Roman times, when Ptolemy formed the new constellation of Equuleus in the southern part of the original figure. In mediaeval China, this asterism was considered the Good and the Rotten Gourd, the good one being formed by the brighter rhombus on the top and the rotten one made of faint stars in the tail of the Roman dolphin.
The bright star to the right of the Dolphin and at the top of the image is Altair, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila. In Chinese uranology, Altair, together with some adjacent areas, forms the constellation of the Drum at the River. However, in Chinese folklore, the bright star stands for a boy in love with a girl, who is represented by the bright star Vega (in Lyra) on the other side of a huge celestial stream, the Milky Way. Vega is not visible in this image but the Lyrid meteor is like a teardrop of the unlucky girl who cannot reach her lover.
In the upper right of the image, the constellation Scorpius shines with its bright reddish star Antares. With some of its neighbouring stars, it was regarded in China as the asterism of The Heart, which was also one of the Lunar Mansions. It was considered the heart of the Azure Dragon, the super-constellation of spring, in ancient China.
Scorpius and Sagittarius, in the middle of the image, contain the brightest clouds of the Milky Way, the Galactic Centre, which also has clearly visible dark clouds in front of the bright ones.
There is no classical Greco-Roman constellation between Aquila and Scorpius, but in the 17th century, two Polish astronomers, the couple Jan and Elizabeta Hevelius, named this area of bright clouds in the Milky Way Scutum, the Shield, in memory of a Polish king. In China, however, this area directly outside the super-constellation (or heavenly enclosure) of the Celestial Market Place was seen as depicting Market Officers.
Credit: Jianfeng Dai/IAU OAE
Glosar de termeni:
Milky Way , Scorpius , Shooting Star , Sagittarius
Categories:
Milky Way and Interstellar Medium
, Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 7.19 MB)
Geminid Meteor Shower from China, by Dai Jianfeng, China
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: First place in the 2021 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Meteor showers.
A meteor shower occurs when the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, passes through a debris trail left previously by a comet on its approach around the Sun. As the Earth enters this debris (small sand grain sized), they enter the atmosphere at high speeds and on parallel trajectories, burning completely leaving beautiful tracks (streaks) in the sky. These streaks can appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, or last much longer. On rare occasions the debris originates from asteroids, as in the case of the Geminid meteor shower, shown in this image, picturing many streaks of debris captured in the sky of China in 2017. Due to relative motions and perspective, the shower appears to come from one single point, known as the radiant point, beautifully pictured in this image. This is similar to driving in a car on a rainy day without any wind, looking out the front window it seems that the rain is coming directly towards the window, when in fact the rain is falling vertically downwards.
Credit: Dai Jianfeng/IAU OAE
Glosar de termeni:
Meteoroid , Shooting Star
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 26.78 MB)
Perseids 2020 over Dark Sky Park Poloniny, by Tomáš Slovinský, Slovakia
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Second place in the 2021 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Meteor showers.
A meteor shower occurs when the debris originated from comets or, on rare occasions, from asteroids enter the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed, leaving behind beautiful tracks in the sky due to friction with the atmosphere. This all-sky image taken in Slovakia in 2020 shows the Perseid meteor shower in a vivid way so one can really see the Perseids appearing all over the sky. This meteor shower is named so because the radiant point (the point on the sky where the meteors misleadingly seem to originate from) of the Perseid meteor shower is located in the constellation Perseus. This is a very prolific meteor shower, and a very popular phenomenon that can be observed from mid-July until mid-August, when the peak of activity happens. This is associated with the comet 109P/Swift–Tuttle, as Earth's orbit around the Sun crosses the debris left behind by this comet. This kind of image is very useful for full dome projections in planetariums, beautifully showing the Milky Way, our home Galaxy.
Credit: Tomáš Slovinský/IAU OAE
Glosar de termeni:
Shooting Star
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 17.24 MB)
Gemini meteor shower, by Hao Yin, China
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Third place in the 2021 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Meteor showers.
As the Earth travels around the Sun, it may cross the path of debris left behind by a comet or, more rarely, by an asteroid. These debris enter the atmosphere at high speed, producing beautiful tracks as they burn in the sky due to friction with the atmosphere. The image captures the Geminid meteor shower, named because the radiant point is located on the sky in the constellation Gemini. The particles composing the meteor shower travel at similar speed and in parallel trajectories, which causes a perspective effect like if the stream radiates from one single point in the sky, which is known as the radiant point. This image, taken in December 2020 in China, clearly shows this perspective. This is a very prolific shower, in such a way that over one hundred meteorites could be seen per hour in recent appearances. This meteor shower is one of the few associated not with a comet, but with an asteroid – 3200 Phaeton, which might be a comet that lost all its volatile material. This image shows the large number of meteors that can be observed in this shower, which always happens in December every year. The image also shows one of the most prominent constellations in the night sky, Orion, easily seen by the three stars in a diagonal making up Orion’s Belt, and the red-orange star Betelgeuse. Right above the dish is a bright point and that is the Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky and part of the constellation Canis Major. The fuzzy bluish smudge at around 2 ‘o’ clock is the Pleiades star cluster.
Credit: Hao Yin/IAU OAE
Glosar de termeni:
Shooting Star
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Atribuire 4.0 Internațional (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 9.78 MB)
