Correction

Damn but I'm an idiot. The photograph in last weeks entry is not what I thought it was but is simply star trails. I was fooled because I believed I was taking a fairly wide field of view. At the zoom setting I thought I was on and exposure time star trails would be tiny at most 1/10 th the size of the "meteors".

However I was skeptical of the photograph particularly the absence of any stubby star trails. So I am forced to the conclusion that I must have accidentally zoomed right in to an area of very few moons and captured a load of star trails. The exposure time is certainly correct. The zoom control is adjacent to the shutter button. QED.

Not for nothing do I call myself Nogbert online.

Geminids Photograph

Taken with a bridge type camera at 4:16 UT 14th December 2010 from Devon, England.
Exposure time one minute.
The field of view is very approx. 10 degrees.

I saw four with the naked eye and was frankly surprised at how many more are visible fading into the background noise. Before fiddling around with the photograph the four naked eye meteors and a few very small trailed ones were visible against an inky black noise free sky. Even more severe processing reveals the presence of many more faint trails. You can get a sense of this from the above picture.