DESCRIPTION: A bright fireball joined my one-hour star trail live composite image taken between 10:14 and 11:14 pm CDT on August 2, 2022 from my backyard in Bloomingdale, Illinois (west suburban Chicago). Olympus' live composite feature slowly built this composite image (in camera) from a total of 1,441 frames, each exposed for 2.5 seconds. Although I checked its progress every few minutes, I was not lucky enough to witness the bright meteor with my eye. However, I believe it occurred shortly before 10:40 because that was when I first noticed the meteor’s trail on my camera's LCD screen. My estimated time of 10:34 is given to match the video recordings of this same event, which I assume had some type of time stamping and may therefore be more reliable. My visual magnitude estimate is -6, brighter than Venus. However, since brightness can only register so high on a camera sensor before saturation occurs, it could have appeared brighter to the unaided eye. This composite image also shows Polaris (aligned above the apex of the house) and the trailed stars of the Big Dipper (far left) and Cassiopeia (far right). The meteor passed through the faint stars of Camelopardalis. TECHNICAL DETAILS: Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III camera with Olympus M.Zuiko 12 mm lens on a Manfrotto/Bogen tripod. f/2.0. ISO 800. Sidereal time = 18:09 to 19:09. Subdued house lighting (from previous frame P8021047) was superimposed over this frame (P8021048) to create a more aesthetically pleasing composition. All processing done using Photoshop Elements.

Benjamin Bart
© Bart Benjamin