December 19, 2018 Bright Meteor from San Nicolas Island

A rocket launch was scheduled from Vandenberg AFB about an hour after sunset on this evening.  It was the 3rd or 4th attempt for this particular launch, with weather and technical glitches causing the previous launch delays.  The weather this evening was perfect and the conditions to photograph the launch from my high point near Nicktown on San Nicolas Island were perfect!  It is not very common to have little or no breeze, no clouds, great visibility, and comfortable temperatures at any particular time out here, it seems.

I dragged my camera gear up the hill and was set up for the launch about ten minutes early.  I took a few practice shots with the 21mm lens to see how long I could make an exposure at different f-stops, given the light conditions.   I was looking to the W or WNW (the launch would be towards my NW) and spotted a very bright meteor shooting downwards towards the ocean.  I was startled a little, but awestruck a lot!  It was really quick, and pretty much over in a split second (okay, maybe a full second), but I managed to click the camera shutter fairly quickly as the meteor was quickly fading out.  It is too bad that it did not occur during one of my test shots, but I was obviously very fortunate that I was up there to begin with to witness this, and to have the camera already ready for something to occur in that direction.

The meteor was so bright and prominent that it left a bright vapor trail which persisted for more than five minutes.  The first shot below is the un-cropped version of the photograph with the meteor.  Again, the view is mainly to the WNW, and the 21mm lens on the full-frame camera results in a very wide field-of-view.  The second image below is a cropped version, and the other two images are a bit later as the vapor trail was blown around by upper winds.

Well, that turned out to be the main show, as the time for the launch came and went with no launch!  It had been scrubbed again due to another mechanical issue or leak or something.

Since many folks along the California coast and elsewhere were waiting with cameras for the launch, the meteor was seen by many.  Some even caught it on video.  Some people saw the old vapor trail and thought that that had been due to the launch.  Three excellent clips of the meteor from youtube are included below.