Thanks to a tip from @Omgitstony, the Geminids Meteor shower is going to peak Dec 13-14th. Get those V3s pointed up to the night sky!
Here’s what a Meteor Shower website said about the upcoming event.
Geminids
Next period of activity: December 4th, 2020 to December 17th, 2020
The Geminids are usually the strongest meteor shower of the year and meteor enthusiasts are certain to circle December 13 and 14 on their calendars.
This is the one major shower that provides good activity prior to midnight as the constellation of Gemini is well placed from 22:00 onward.
The Geminids are often bright and intensely colored.
Due to their medium-slow velocity, persistent trains are not usually seen. These meteors are also seen in the southern hemisphere, but only during the middle of the night and at a reduced rate.
Next Peak - The Geminids will next peak on the Dec 13-14, 2020 night. On this night, the moon will be 1% full.
The website also lists addtional 2021 events. Mark your calendars now! Gotta love the V3’s Starlight Sensor ability! @WyzeDongsheng@WyzeGwendolyn
The Geminid meteor shower – always a highlight of the meteor year – is expected to peak in 2020 on the night of December 13-14 (Sunday evening until dawn Monday). You should see a decent spattering of meteors on the preceding nights (December 11-12 and December 12-13) as well. And you might catch a Geminid meteor anytime this week, as the shower builds to its peak. The Geminids are a very reliable shower if you watch at the best time of night, centered on about 2 a.m. for all parts of the globe, and if you watch in a dark sky. The meteors tend to be bold, white and quick. This shower favors Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, but it’s visible from the Southern Hemisphere, too. The curious rock comet called 3200 Phaethon is the parent body of this shower.
On a dark night, near the peak, you can often catch 50 or more meteors per hour. On an optimum night for the Geminids, it’s possible to see 150 meteors per hour … which might happen this year, given the moon-free skies accompanying this year’s Geminid meteor shower. New moon falls on December 14, 2020. On the mornings prior to that date, you’ll see a waning crescent moon. And – on December 11, 12 and 13, 2020 – after a night of meteor-watching, the slender lunar crescent and dazzling planet Venus will rise into your eastern sky at or near dawn.
You might have to pull the sd card out and scroll through the “Record” sub-directory minute by minute … but it will be worth it! @mvb and I caught some of the Leonid V3 meteors captures with triggered recorded motion events but the vast majority of the meteors were pulled by scrolling through the “record” files. Use the “pause/slider” and pull the slider back and forth so you don’t have to wade through each video minute real time.
That’s actually pretty good! I have go through my footage from yesterday and copy over last night’s. I set up a V3 time lapse with night vision off hoping to catch the northern light. I’m not very hopeful. I think clouds moved in and there was a lot of light pollution. But, I’ll download load it anyway. The file if over 700 mb in size, so it’s going to take a while.
My real question is: WHY in the world are you viewing the live stream at 4 in the morning???
@mvb Oh and Mike, I hadn’t pulled the sd card to create the video posted here. I used “view playback” via the app and scrolled back to the time I happen to see the meteor, and hit the record option to produce the snippet I posted. You could do the same and scroll back to the time and see if your skies happen to clear. The timing should be close but I don’t know what your clouds were doing at that time,
If it helps anyone out, i’ve also had a Gopro out taking long exposures and then i go through all the photos in the morning and look for streaks. I also use a starttrail app that stacks photos and i’ll stack an hour of photos at a time. Makes it easy to go through many photos at once. When i find one, i’ll go to that time on my V3s to see what i caught. Narrows down the time to search pretty well.
Just checked the playback on my V3. The clouds parted. The skies opened up briefly. And I caught a Geminid meteor at 2:09 am CST. Appears lower left corner.
Boy, that sure beats scrolling through the SD card recording of each day, each hour, each minute, each second of a meteor shower scheduled time frame. Still, I find the search exciting.
Please post some of your meteor streak photo stacks with the GoPro/Startrail app. I’d love to see them.
I’m also hoping lots of people are going to capture lots of great things tonight. The Geminid peak tonight is still cloud “iffy” for me, but hope to see what others capture.
Surely there has to be a few V3s somewhere pointed up into a cloudless dark night!
I continue to be absolutely amazed at what a V3 can see in the night sky!
@bam@WyzeDongsheng@mvb Going thru the just over an hour I had a clear sky during the Geminids peak on Dec. 13-14, I found a few meteors … but not as many as I though I would capture. But then again, my sky view was cloudy most of the night
Oh well, here’s the best I caught with the Wyze V3 Starlight Sensor. It’s a quick clip from the 14th at 4:24 am , with the meteor center of screen. Don’t blink! It’s more impressive full screen.
I’m hoping other V3 star gazers did better. And I’m look forward to seeing more Geminid meteors that were captured by others with this slick Wyze V3 camera.
It’s possible a few stray Geminids may appear the next couple of nights!
It’s pretty time consuming to go through the sd card’s “record” subdirectory, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, watching for something that lasts less than a second. But I find it still exciting.
