Australian photographer captures asteroid and meteor same night

Colin just wanted to capture the movement of the Asteroid 2012 DA 14 instead he also captured the meteor movement that struck Russia last week.


Asteroid 2012 DA 14 passed very close to the Earth on February 16th 2013, local time. Australians, and Western Australians in particular were in a great position to observe the asteroid, being on the night side of Earth as it flew by.

I captured this footage starting 3.24 am from a dark sky site 350 km east of Perth. Just after camera rolling, a beautiful meteor burned across the sky, and amazingly, passed right through my camera's field of view, lingering while the debris train swept up and out of view. In addition, the sky was also very busy swarming with countless man made satellites. The asteroid is the bright object at left moving down the screen.

The scene was captured at 50 mm, iso 8000, f/2.2, 8 second shutter, 9 second intervals.

For more details and other examples of my work, check out - facebook.com/ColinLeggPhotography