Perseid Meteor Shower Pics -- who's gottem?

kdog

So it ain't as easy as it looks. At least not for me. I got two meager meteor shots, and a couple of other shots of interest. I actually saw dozens of meteors. I'm still scratching my head why I didn't actually capture more. :scratch

This is a meteor. 100% crop.

These are 30 second exposures which is why the stars are blurred into a line rather than being round.

This is another meteor -- very faint.


Pretty sure this is actually a plane because there are evenly distributed dots along the length of the trail which are probably due to a flashing red light.


I think this is a satellite. It wasn't moving fast enough to be a meteor, and I don't think it was a plane because there was no red and nothing blinking.


Surely somebody out there has something better to show than my feable attempt. Give 'em up. :deal


Cheers,
-joel

Buttkicker

Hi Kdog
your efforts are about the same as mine not so easy
that 3rd one you have is the International Space Station, it passes over the UK at 11.38pm last night and this is the pic I got of it


This is an Aeroplane

and finally this is a Meteor
not great but at least I got one on camera.. saw about 12 in total and 2 of them were spectacular.. sadly they were not in front of my lens when they appeared :cry


Cheers Chris

Dee

You guys are lucky! I'm hoping it will be clear tonight and I can check. Last time I dragged my daughter and our tripods to some open space and found the place loaded with other stargazers! Finally found a place to park the car. Then trying not to fall into a ditch or twist an ankle! It was some trial to capture anything, and hard to see in the dark to set up the cameras! So unless I can set up at the beach parking lot or my deck, I'm not going through that again.:D

So you are lucky with your shots. I hope someone else got some photos of the big display in the sky and will post them.

Awais Yaqub

Very nice thanks for sharing but how do you know the exact place it will pass through ?

kdog

Great shots, Chris! Love the composition with the church.

If that's the space station, I might even have some better shots. I'll have to go through my pictures again when I have some time.

Cheers,
-joel

kdog

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Very nice thanks for sharing but how do you know the exact place it will pass through ?

Awais,

You don't really know! You point the camera in the general direction of the meteor shower and leave the shutter open for a long time and pray. I used 30 seconds. Repeat this for hours until you get meteor in the shot. Literally.

Using a wider angle lens will get more of the sky, but the meteor of course will be much smaller in the frame.

Cheers,
-jeol

kdog

Dee wrote:

You guys are lucky! I'm hoping it will be clear tonight and I can check. Last time I dragged my daughter and our tripods to some open space and found the place loaded with other stargazers! Finally found a place to park the car. Then trying not to fall into a ditch or twist an ankle! It was some trial to capture anything, and hard to see in the dark to set up the cameras! So unless I can set up at the beach parking lot or my deck, I'm not going through that again.:D

So you are lucky with your shots. I hope someone else got some photos of the big display in the sky and will post them.

Thanks, Dee. Good luck!!

-joel

David_S85

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Very nice thanks for sharing but how do you know the exact place it will pass through ?

Awais, the Perseids occur annually, between Aug. 11th and the 13th with best visibility between 1am and 4am. I am fairly certain the same dates and times work for all timezones. The meteor streaks come in from the northeast sky and move southwesterly (approx.).

While meteors are random in nature, they can be visible across the entire arc of the sky, so it's best to use a somewhat wide angle lens or just view by eyeball.

PhotoHound

Perseid Meteor
I managed to catch a couple last night; not spectacular but at least it's something I guess...



Here's a crop:


As an added bonus though, this shot also includes Mars, which was what I was actually trying for:



Lots more went by right by above my lens

Scott

ziggy53

I am so jealous of people with clear skies. I was hopeful last night, but at 11 PM there was only one small patch where I could see stars (and in the wrong part of the sky). By 2 AM, everything was overcast.

I may try again tonight.

I was greatly encouraged by this site:

http://www.moonglow.net/ccd/pictures/other/index.html#perseids

kdog

PhotoHound wrote:

I managed to catch a couple last night; not spectacular but at least it's something I guess...
Scott

Awesome! Great comps. Great sky you had too.

-joel

Nikolai

I spent about two hours, saw about 25 of them, some were pretty good, but failed to catch a single one. I realized that my settings were WAY off for what I was trying to achieve.
OK, maybe I'll get lucky next time, September 1st, when the Earth will pass through the central part of the Aurigids..

DJ-S1

ziggy53 wrote:

I was greatly encouraged by this site:

http://www.moonglow.net/ccd/pictures/other/index.html#perseids

Wow. That's some phenominal work on that site - he was one of the people who got the Columbia disaster on video as well. Some amazing astronomy images there, check it out people.

Biffbradford

I was lucky enought to have off of work for other reasons, so I stayed up all night. Clouds just moved in after midnight, so I drove 30 minutes north and parked just off a country road.



After an hour and a half, fog developed, so I drove east 5 miles to the beach at Lake Michigan where it was so dark I could barely walk around, but Orion was just rising and the sky was clear again.

Here's a plane:



and a meteor:



By sunrise, I had seen 25 bright meteors, 22 of which eluded my lens including one that was *HUGE* and broke up as it fell.

No meteor here, just early dawn:



When I first arrived at the beach, it was so dark I thought that there were big rocks out in the water (very rare here). I had to laugh when I could finally see that they were clouds, about 10 miles out!

I had a blast, can't wait to do it again.

Canon EOS-40D, 28 - 70mm
Sony DSC-H9 with wide angle lens.

kdog

Well done, Biff!!!

I got bupkis. Set up my camera with an interval timer, 30 seconds, 28mm, ISO200. Saw three of four meteors while I was setting up, and went to bed all excited about all the meteors I was going to get as my interval timer dutifully worked all night. Nada. ISO200 doesn't cut it. Last year I had used ISO1600 which worked great. But this year, I believed some stupid website that recommend 200. What was I thinking. :cry

Oh well, at least I mastered the interval timer. I may get out tonight and see if I can redeem myself on any stragglers that might be whizzing by out there.

Nikolai

kdog wrote:

Well done, Biff!!!

I got bupkis. Set up my camera with an interval timer, 30 seconds, 28mm, ISO200. Saw three of four meteors while I was setting up, and went to bed all excited about all the meteors I was going to get as my interval timer dutifully worked all night. Nada. ISO200 doesn't cut it. Last year I had used ISO1600 which worked great. But this year, I believed some stupid website that recommend 200. What was I thinking. :cry

Oh well, at least I mastered the interval timer. I may get out tonight and see if I can redeem myself on any stragglers that might be whizzing by out there.

Is it that time of year again? Did I miss the memo?

IPClark

Damn, I missed them this year? I just didn't even think. That said, we've had a lot of cloudy skies anyway.

Here's one from last year before I knew about Dgrin. This was my first ever usage of BULB mode on my camera. I was actually setting up a test shot at ISO 1600 by where I would have then dropped the ISO down. I'd exposed for about 15 seconds when this beauty just streaked right across the sky right across the frame. . Kept it open for a further 20 incase another came. No such luck

BeachBill

I went out last night... I had to drive 60 miles north of Las Vegas to get away from the strip lights. I ended up in the desert about a mile from the main gate to the Nevada Test Site (images of the beginning of the latest Indiana Jones movie kept creeping into my mind).

Anyway, during the hour I was out there, I saw about 40 streaks from the perseid shower across the sky (I think I found a good place where I won't capture airplane streaks due to the restricted airspace) and 3 really good ones, however my camera was never pointed in the right direction... :cry

If only the moon wasn't there... I would have had something to post I'm sure as it was washing out the majority of meteor activity...

IPClark

Post resurrection

I didn't get a chance at all last night. Far too cloudy over Liverpool and I'd have had to drive for some time to get far enough away from light pollution.

I could have tried again in the back garden but the idiot in the next street has a security light that will not go out

PhotoPaul

Focusing
I'm curious on what the best way is to focus on stars. I tried last night and couldn't tell if the stars were in focus or not, most pics were soft.

Nikolai

PhotoPaul wrote:

I'm curious on what the best way is to focus on stars. I tried last night and couldn't tell if the stars were in focus or not, most pics were soft.

You can go hyperfocal way. f/10 or more will provide decent hyperfocal distance.
Another way is to use LiveView. This is a way to get a very accurate focusing...

PhotoPaul

Nikolai wrote:

You can go hyperfocal way. f/10 or more will provide decent hyperfocal distance.
Another way is to use LiveView. This is a way to get a very accurate focusing...

Thanks for the advice. I was at f/2.8 or so. I'll try the f/10. Definately will make sure my next camera purchase includes one with LiveView.

dlplumer

Great thread Joel, and a lot of wonderful captures

I especially like seeing my old stomping grounds (Pleiades). Makes me a bit nostalgic.

Danny

David_S85

PhotoPaul wrote:

I'm curious on what the best way is to focus on stars. I tried last night and couldn't tell if the stars were in focus or not, most pics were soft.

Live view if you have it. If the moon is up there somewhere, grab an edge of that to focus on, and then place the lens in manual (maybe tape it there) and you're good to go. Use an f-stop 5.6 or maybe a little higher - & ISO 400 or higher, depending on your camera's ability to withstand noise in longer shots.