My Perseids Meteor Shower Recap
On Monday I wrote that I was not only going to watch this year's Perseids Meteor Shower but I was also going to try and capture the event on camera via digital still photography. I tried, and although I wouldn't say that I failed, I wasn't successful in capturing a meteor on camera.
What I did do, however, is learn a ton about SLR photography and photographing the night sky and in doing so realized my passion for photography and my desire to learn more and take this up as a serious hobby. And I will.
Onto the (two) night's festivities. On Monday night/Tuesday morning I stayed up until 2am watching what was by far the peak of the shower. There were about 40 meteorites visible to me/us that night, on a relatively clear night. I took plenty of photographs but didn't catch a meteor on film (or memory card to be exact). The second night, after being very tired, I only stayed up until 12am. I only saw two meteors (the night wasn't as clear) but I suspect I would have seen more if I stayed up later on both nights.
I thought I caught one on camera on Tuesday night, because I was shooting and pointed in the right direction when I saw a meteor appear, but since I was playing with aperture at that point and the meteor was faint, it didn't show up on camera.
After the first night I learned what I was doing wrong/right and therefore I was way more comfortable heading into the second night. I actually had a strategy heading into night two of using a higher aperture (of about 8.0) with a shutter speed/exposure of 8 second intervals with a cable release remote. This gave me some good results with some nice looking photos from night two, problem was that there were next to no meteors to capture. If only I practiced one night before the peak (I wasn't even aware that I was going to do this on the day of) then I would have been more ready. Ah well, it's all a learning experience.
Here is a link to my Picasa album with all the photos that I deemed worthy of keeping: http://picasaweb.google.com/shaheed.devji/PerseidsMeteorShowerAug1209?feat=directlink
I have attached a few of the photos here.
The first is what I thought to be a meteor from the first night, but it turns out that my aperture was too low (I was letting in too much light) and it was just a bright starin orbit.:
The second is when I began playing around at the end of the first night, letting in lots of light for a photo of the moon. Turned out cool. The album has a progression of different aperture levels:
The third is a photo of trees and the constellation Perseus from which the meteors were radiating. This was from the second night:
