The smoke and haze in Southeastern BC was a problem, but the Allsky Meteor Cam on the Cranbrook College of the Rockies roof still got a dozen bright Perseids or so on the 12-13th. Not 52 like Jeff Brower got on his AllSky meteor cam in Kelowna, by a long shot. This year was a bit better than 2013, although not as many bright fireballs. Below are the brightest ten meteors of the night, all shown on one frame, on the fisheye all-sky view.
I ended up going to the top of nearby Mt. Baker to get above the smoke. South of Cranbrook, just 26km on my tripmeter on a gravel logging road with lots of switchbacks, ending at some radio towers at 7,200 ft altitude. Even up there the horizons were shrouded in haze, and you could see blue haze in the headlights. I couldn’t see Sagittarius at all, no stars were visible below Aquilla. The dim red beacon lights on the radio tower tops weren’t too bright by the picnic table, so that’s where I ended up. I was the only person there, quiet and cool, about 11 deg C. Crickets singing, owls hooting and coyotes howling way off in the distance, motors and fans cutting on and off from the antennaes. Maybe a bat winged over. There are dozens of satellite dishes and radio towers around the hill crest there.
I setup three Nikons and a colour video cam. Left them autoclicking for an hour until the main batteries died, then another hour until the spares died.
Overhead the stars were clear and the sky dark with the Milky Way band glowing. Perseus, Pegasus and Auriga to the East over the Steeples were bright. It was great! The meteors were coming down left and right every fifteen seconds! Some bright ones leaving a glowing line that slowly faded. Mostly white, but some green tinged. Some sporatics that didn’t radiate from Perseus.
That zigzag constellation above is Perseus, with two tiny green meteor streaks radiating from there, red at the ends. There is a fainter third meteor.
Above is a photo of a sporatic going through Cygnus the Swan. Deneb the tail at top, Alberio the beak at bottom. Milky way glow. Shots of Andromeda got nothing except the Andromeda galaxy.
I took these photos with a bunch of Nikon D100 DSLR cameras with Tamron 28mm f/2.5 lenses, and a Vivitar 28mm f/2.0 lens. Exposure times were 30 seconds at 3200 ISO using sunlight white balance. I found I needed at least a f/2.8 lens, since when I used a f/3.3 lens a fairly bright meteor only appeared as a faint streak across the photo.
Rick