Aurigid Meteor Shower

ehughes

My take on the Aurigid Meteor Shower, this is 157 stacked images taken from Glacier Point.

There are about a dozen or so meteor trails visable in the shot, it was a grat view from up there.

ISO 200 - 20 second exposures

gus

If anyone could do it ...it was going to be you mate Magnificent !!

Andy

Nice job, Ed

Wonder if you'd share the technique - at shoot and in post?

kdog

ehughes wrote:

this is 157 stacked images taken from Glacier Point.

Yowza! Would love to learn more about this technique.

Great work. Creativity at its finest.

-joel

m_granite

Wonder if you would smoothen the horizon & end of the sky a bit. Look like jumping from land to effect.

It is an intriguing shot by the way.

Awais Yaqub

Wow fantastic

Skippy

ehughes wrote:

My take on the Aurigid Meteor Shower, this is 157 stacked images taken from Glacier Point.

There are about a dozen or so meteor trails visable in the shot, it was a grat view from up there.

ISO 200 - 20 second exposures

Wow Ed, the shot looks more like a meteor storm, kinda scary to wonder what would happen if they made contact with the earth hu

Excellent Shot ..... Skippy
.

ehughes

Thanks folks, I'll write up something tomorrow on how the image was made. Just finished up another 20 hour day running all over the state shooting.

ehughes

Here's the scoop on how the image above was created, it's a fairly simple process. A cable release and a sturdy tripod are a must.

1. Get up at some insane hour and drive for a few hours ( the drive is optional )

2. Set your camera on burst mode and manual focus. Focus to infinity and then back off a little.

3. I set my camera for a 20 second exposure at 200 ISO ( you can take a few practice shots depending on how bright the moon is while you are shooting. The apparant movent of the stars depends largly on the focal length you are using, the longer the lens the more apparant the movement. Normally with a dark sky a 30 to 40 second exposure is preferrable. This night with the bright moon 20 seconds was about all I could get away with without blowing out the ground.

4. Compose your shot and lock down the tripod.

5. Set and lock the cable release and let the camera fire away.

After the shooting is done you can put your pictures together with this photoshop action

http://www.schursastrophotography.com/software/photoshop/startrails.html

The picture above represents 2 hours of movement.

Hope that helps a little, have fun..

Nikolai

Ed, this is awesome! My view was nothing compared to yours!

Van Isle

how does this technique work with, say, Nikon noise reduction where long exposures are followed by an equally long sensor sampling to weed out hot pixels? Just turn it off? That's the idea in the first place of stacking a series of shorter exposure images, n'est pas? Reduce hot pixels and associated noise?

Great shot by the way. It's the meteors crossing it all that make it for me. :

VI

ehughes

Nikolai wrote:

Ed, this is awesome! My view was nothing compared to yours!

Thanks Nik, next time just come hang out with us in the park

Nikolai

ehughes wrote:

Thanks Nik, next time just come hang out with us in the park

Thanks, let me know when you go next time. Leonids, perhaps?

ehughes

Nikolai wrote:

Thanks, let me know when you go next time. Leonids, perhaps?

When is the next one due?

Nikolai

ehughes wrote:

When is the next one due?

Leonids, around November 17

OffTopic

Wow, that is gorgeous! What a perfect spot to photograph the meteor showers. I like the touch of warm color from the lights down in the valley, Would love to see this larger since it's kinda hard to pick the meteors out of the star trails.

Thanks for posting the action and the tutorial for stacking. That should be much easier than trying to manually subtract a dark image. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.