Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Perseids and Polestar, The Movie

This 32 second movie covers 95 minutes of attempted Perseid meteor watching, from 3:23 to 5:06 AM on August 11. I've left out the hours of solid clouds before and after for the sake of brevity and out of respect for the sheer pointlessness of including them. During this movie, there are at least four meteors to be seen, one impressive, the others not so much. One thing that the movie reveals, which wasn't apparent in the field, is that there were two layers of clouds that morning, moving in nearly opposite directions, just to ensure the smallest possible chance of their gaps lining-up to permit the Perseids to be seen.

The movie is far from raw excitement, but, if you've followed along with my meteor watching tales this far, you might extract some small amusement from this moving-pictures experience.

Click here to view the movie.

The movie is in QuickTime format (H.264, specifically), measures 615 x 925, and is 6 MB in size. (I tried using Google video to host the movie, but, like every free movie hosting service I've encountered, it insists that movies be small, blurry and in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and that's never the way I make movies. One size does not fit all.)

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous8:40 AM CDT

    Well, you saw a whole lot more than I did - either too many clouds or too much night-shine from all the d****d shopping centers.
    So at least with your movie, I got to see some :-)

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