# Perseid Meteor Shower Aug. 11-12 2013



## jrista (Aug 11, 2013)

Just in case anyone likes photographing meteor showers, the Perseids peak on August 11th and 12th. I am not sure I'll be able to get any shots...Colorado has been experiencing pretty powerful thunderstorms every evening and through most of the night for about a week now. *sob!* :'( 

Anyway, if anyone manages to capture any night sky photos of the shower, I'd love to see some posted here! 

http://www.space.com/22133-summer-meteor-showers-2013.html


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## niteclicks (Aug 13, 2013)

I had clouds here again too. Every major event other than Pannstars has been a bust for me the last two years.
The summer skies are my favorite but the humidity this year has been like shooting though a fish bowl.


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2013)

niteclicks said:


> I had clouds here again too. Every major event other than Pannstars has been a bust for me the last two years.
> The summer skies are my favorite but the humidity this year has been like shooting though a fish bowl.



Aye...too cloudy here as well. Totally agree about the humidity...I live in Colorado, which is usually pretty arid. This year has been very strange in that we have relatively high humidity (sometimes 90-100%). I am hoping that by the time October/November rolls around and Comet ISON fills the sky!


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## emag (Aug 13, 2013)

From the you-think-that's-bad department......Florida Panhandle here. In August, 90% humidity would be considered arid. Just in case the unimagineable occurs and the sky clears up for one evening, we have Ninja mosquitoes just waiting for us to be foolish enough to set up scopes and cameras. In all my years here, I have once and only once enjoyed astrophotography on an August night. It was while a hurricane was crossing central Florida and sucking dry air over Pensacola, dropped to the low 60's that night, it felt frigid. A few weeks later we were hit by Hurricane Ivan, took out the U.S. Interstate 10 bridge over the bay and knocked out power for weeks. But oh how gourgeous the skies were after that.....dark, clear, no light pollution. We slept in the screen room because it was too hot in the house, I still recall seeing the Pleiades rising through the branches of the leafless trees in my back yard.


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## niteclicks (Aug 13, 2013)

I guess we should find out in a couple weeks how ISON is progressing, I hope it has brightened. November here in Oklahoma usually are some of our best skies and weather. I learned a lot with Pannstars and have better East views available , only down side I'm not a morning person. :-\


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## CarsonWA (Aug 13, 2013)

Timelapsed from about 10pm-4am here in Tennessee and I was definitely shooting between the clouds. Looked at the footage and haven't seen anything novel yet... Any ideas on how to best capture a meteor shower? Long Exposures?


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## niteclicks (Aug 13, 2013)

I have seen other posts that had good skies , but no fireballs . I saw two about 3 min. apart @ 4:00 am when I got up to see if it cleared up, but it was so humid I went back to bed. Time lapse was what I was going to do, about 30 sec. exposure and 5 sec between. Have you stretched the exposures to the max to see if you caught any at all? I wasn't concerned with trailing, more with continual coverage and 28mm on full frame the trailing in that part of the sky wasn't that bad .


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## CarlTN (Aug 13, 2013)

jrista said:


> I am hoping that by the time October/November rolls around and Comet ISON fills the sky!



I look forward to ISON as well...


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## jrista (Aug 14, 2013)

CarsonWA said:


> Timelapsed from about 10pm-4am here in Tennessee and I was definitely shooting between the clouds. Looked at the footage and haven't seen anything novel yet... Any ideas on how to best capture a meteor shower? Long Exposures?



Actually, shorter exposures at higher ISO are ideal. I usually shoot showers at ISO 3200, with 4 to 6 second shutter speeds. I attach a wireless intervalometer, set it up to take a shot as frequently as possible, set it to maximum number of exposures, and let it rip. (The wireless intervalometer is great for the Geminids, when it can be below freezing outside. You can handily sit inside your car and control your camera without having to venture back out into the cold except to reposition the camera.) 







The reason to use higher ISO and shorter shutter is to normalize "time on pixels". You want the amount of time on pixels for the meteors to be as high as, or higher than, the amount of time on pixels for stars. The longer you expose, the longer stars will have time on pixels, where as short-lived meteors will have less, in relative terms. The longer the exposure time, the dimmer meteors will be. The photo above was ISO 3200, 4 seconds. The photo below is what you get with a longer exposure time (in this case, not much longer...6-8 seconds I think, however it was also a dimmer meteor than the one above. A 4 second exposure, at ISO 6400, might have been better.):






Getting shutter speed right is key. Too short, and you run a greater risk that the inter-exposure time (mirror flap down, intervalometer delay, etc.) will occur when a meteor streaks. Longer, and you are more likely to capture a meteor...but they tend to be too dim to really be exciting. To maximize your potential, having two cameras, at 4-6 second shutter speeds, high ISO, but alternating exposure intervals, will ensure that one camera always has its shutter open, maximizing the chance of capturing a meteor as it enters the atmosphere.

Here are a couple more shots. These were all of the Geminids last December. I have not had a chance to capture any other showers this year. Either too cloudy, or I missed the date. I think the Draconids, which are a slower show, with slower moving but often bright streakers, happens soonish (October?). I'm hoping that the sky is clear when that one occurs... The Draconids had a ZHR of 100 last year, which is pretty high! (About 1.5 meteors per second.) Not sure if it will be that good this year or not.


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## jrista (Aug 14, 2013)

emag said:


> From the you-think-that's-bad department......Florida Panhandle here. In August, 90% humidity would be considered arid. Just in case the unimagineable occurs and the sky clears up for one evening, we have Ninja mosquitoes just waiting for us to be foolish enough to set up scopes and cameras. In all my years here, I have once and only once enjoyed astrophotography on an August night. It was while a hurricane was crossing central Florida and sucking dry air over Pensacola, dropped to the low 60's that night, it felt frigid. A few weeks later we were hit by Hurricane Ivan, took out the U.S. Interstate 10 bridge over the bay and knocked out power for weeks. But oh how gourgeous the skies were after that.....dark, clear, no light pollution. We slept in the screen room because it was too hot in the house, I still recall seeing the Pleiades rising through the branches of the leafless trees in my back yard.



I bet that dark, light-pollution-free sky was pretty freakin amazing! Got any photos? 

I'll admit, 90-100% humidity is not as bad as many places along the east cost. It is still pretty bad, though. Two weekends ago we had really high humidity. I just had to walk out side and stand there, and I'd be dripping within five minutes. That is pretty much unheard of out here in Colorado. Things are usually bone dry.  

What has been nice is the weather...Colorado went through about a decade of weird weather...less and less summer rain, until last year we literally got nothing between the second week of June through the first couple weeks of September. It was blistering hot, our water reserves dropped by five to six feet (hundreds of millions of gallons at least), etc. The rain this year has been like a kick back to the 90's...when it rained like clockwork at 4pm every summer evening. Not quite as clockworklike this year, but regular enough that we get rain almost every day.


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## CarlTN (Aug 14, 2013)

Even a dark sky is never dark enough for a really long exposure...so agree with Jrista...shorter exposures are best. The issue isn't so much the brightness of the stars, but the air of the sky. (Even with zero light pollution, the sky still lights up, whether from the star light, or other phenomena). If there were no air, then the brightness of the stars in a longer exposure would take precedence.


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## CarlTN (Aug 14, 2013)

Wish I had taken some like these...gotta love the Andromeda Galaxy...and the Milky Way shot is very nice despite the ugly light pollution on the clouds to the right. Neither of these shots actually puts the meteors themselves at the forefront of the composition, however...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yahooeditorspicks/galleries/72157635065238094/with/9501308605/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yahooeditorspicks/galleries/72157635065238094/with/9503169037/lightbox/


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## celestyx (Aug 14, 2013)

I didn't catch any meteor this time, but a nice shot of the Milky Way over the mountains as the clouds rise in the valley : 
http://500px.com/photo/43180156


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## BrandonKing96 (Aug 14, 2013)

sigh i was going to try and take photos of what I could (living in Australia), but it got cloudy very quickly, even though the day was super clear!


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## niteclicks (Aug 14, 2013)

Thanks for the reminder jrista. My brain is getting ever more forgetful. I just divided up the time by my card size and was going to go with that. Guess its just as well that it clouded up, saved me a lot of time sorting photos in frustration.


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## Schruminator (Aug 14, 2013)

This is a compilation of a few shots from the other night.





http://500px.com/photo/43230586


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## CarlTN (Aug 14, 2013)

Schruminator said:


> This is a compilation of a few shots from the other night.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Nice work, the Milky Way is a bit faded. If this was intentional, I guess it works. Attention is certainly drawn to the meteors.


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## Schruminator (Aug 14, 2013)

Naw, with the light pollution in the area you just can't get the Milky Way to show up any brighter than that. I'm definitely looking forward to my trip to Wyoming in a few weeks to get away from the city lights!


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## jrista (Aug 14, 2013)

niteclicks said:


> Thanks for the reminder jrista. My brain is getting ever more forgetful. I just divided up the time by my card size and was going to go with that. Guess its just as well that it clouded up, saved me a lot of time sorting photos in frustration.



Here is a better reminder:






   

The end of the year is a really good time for meteor showers...Draconids, Leonids, Orionids, and Geminids. All in the span of less than three months. I just hope the sky is clear for all four of them. I didn't get any good shots of the Leonids and Orionids last year...I hadn't yet figured out the whole "time on pixels" factor (or the meteors that I was able to see were just too dim...a nice big fireball would show up brightly even on a 30 second exposure.) The Geminids were the first shower that I got some good shots of. I really want to apply the technique this year (and hopefully with a 5D III) to all four showers.


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## jrista (Aug 14, 2013)

Schruminator said:


> This is a compilation of a few shots from the other night.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Excellent shot. It looks like you might have actually gotten some meteors from different showers. I can see a bunch coming from the same radiant, and there are a couple others that seem to streak cross-wise to that radiant. Wonder which storm those were from...

Light pollution is such a pain. I headed out about 35 minutes from down, well south of the Denver area, for the Geminids last year. I am thinking I might need to drive more like an hour to get to darker territory this year.


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## CarlTN (Aug 14, 2013)

Schruminator said:


> Naw, with the light pollution in the area you just can't get the Milky Way to show up any brighter than that. I'm definitely looking forward to my trip to Wyoming in a few weeks to get away from the city lights!



I can sympathize with light pollution myself. You did an admirable job with it!


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## Cali_PH (Aug 15, 2013)

Here's one of the shots from Saturday night/Sunday morning, up in Yosemite; please don't be too harsh, it was my first time trying this kind of thing. I think some of the warmer colors & haze on the horizon were due to some local fires. I used a lot higher ISO because I was shooting for timelapse video and wanted the milky way moving in it. Shot this in tungsten after reading that somewhere on the net, but now I wonder if it's too blue. Unfortunately, there were some really good streaking meteors leaving glowing trails that were overhead or otherwise not in front of my lens, even though this was 14mm.


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## jrista (Aug 15, 2013)

Cali_PH said:


> Here's one of the shots from Saturday night/Sunday morning, up in Yosemite; please don't be too harsh, it was my first time trying this kind of thing. I think some of the warmer colors & haze on the horizon were due to some local fires. I used a lot higher ISO because I was shooting for timelapse video and wanted the milky way moving in it. Shot this in tungsten after reading that somewhere on the net, but now I wonder if it's too blue. Unfortunately, there were some really good streaking meteors leaving glowing trails that were overhead or otherwise not in front of my lens, even though this was 14mm.



Great shot! Looks like you had some nice, dark skies. I would say 14mm is a great focal length for wide field night sky photography.


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## CarlTN (Aug 15, 2013)

Cali_PH said:


> Here's one of the shots from Saturday night/Sunday morning, up in Yosemite; please don't be too harsh, it was my first time trying this kind of thing. I think some of the warmer colors & haze on the horizon were due to some local fires. I used a lot higher ISO because I was shooting for timelapse video and wanted the milky way moving in it. Shot this in tungsten after reading that somewhere on the net, but now I wonder if it's too blue. Unfortunately, there were some really good streaking meteors leaving glowing trails that were overhead or otherwise not in front of my lens, even though this was 14mm.



At the risk of being criticized by the landscape photo police, you should have tried turning the camera sideways...since you are saying you missed some meteors overhead.

The color temperature of your Milky Way indeed is far too cool, but since it was intentional, I suppose it's a valid take on it. I've seen this look before. It's quite a nice shot...certainly the blue hue is appealing and draws one into the image. Of course if it's shot in RAW you can tweak on the color temperature however you wish later on. 

If you are saying this was your first night sky shot..._like ever_...WOW that's quite a good result, no doubts about that!! You're on your way. I envy your Yosemite visit. It is a very highly traffic'ed park, though. For good reason, of course.


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## Schruminator (Aug 15, 2013)

Granted, this was over the course a few hours, but they were all from the same night. This was the first time I've seen or had a chance to shoot any meteors-- are they normally roughly in the same direction? I was a bit surprised with how scattered some of them seemed.



jrista said:


> Schruminator said:
> 
> 
> > This is a compilation of a few shots from the other night.
> ...


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## rpt (Aug 15, 2013)

Schruminator said:


> Granted, this was over the course a few hours, but they were all from the same night. This was the first time I've seen or had a chance to shoot any meteors-- are they normally roughly in the same direction? I was a bit surprised with how scattered some of them seemed.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The earth rotates 15 degrees every hour so how many hours were you out? About 3 or so I am guessing looking at the variation in the angle of the streaks...

I like the picture


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## Schruminator (Aug 15, 2013)

rpt said:


> The earth rotates 15 degrees every hour so how many hours were you out? About 3 or so I am guessing looking at the variation in the angle of the streaks...
> 
> I like the picture



Thanks! And good guess, I think the pictures spanned from roughly 10:30 to about 1 AM or so. It was quite the show


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## jrista (Aug 15, 2013)

Schruminator said:


> Granted, this was over the course a few hours, but they were all from the same night. This was the first time I've seen or had a chance to shoot any meteors-- are they normally roughly in the same direction? I was a bit surprised with how scattered some of them seemed.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Meteors in a given shower all radiate from the same point in the sky...called the "radiant". The Perseids are so named because their radiant is in the constellation Perseus. Most radiants are named after constellations, stars, star clusters, etc. If you point your camera at the radiant, then you usually get meteors streaking out from that point. Point the camera some other direction, and meteors will either streak across or streak down. Any other meteors that seem to come from elsewhere would be isolated ones, or possibly from another concurrent shower (which actually happens, particularly in August, however most other showers besides the big four, Perseids, Leonids, Orionids, Geminids, usually have very low ZHR, or Zenithal Hourly Rate...the number of meteors per hour.)


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## rpt (Aug 15, 2013)

Schruminator said:


> rpt said:
> 
> 
> > The earth rotates 15 degrees every hour so how many hours were you out? About 3 or so I am guessing looking at the variation in the angle of the streaks...
> ...



The monsoon season (English for *mausam *{used both in Hindi and Urdu} - Seasons or probably a better translation is weather...) here in India - so clouds and rain! Well, I'd prefer rain to a shower of comet tail...


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## Cali_PH (Aug 16, 2013)

jrista said:


> Great shot! Looks like you had some nice, dark skies. I would say 14mm is a great focal length for wide field night sky photography.



Thank you! Yes we did, no moon, far from major light sources  I must admit, I did try to play with contrast, black etc. to try to emphasize the meteors. I didn't know about the meteor-to-star light ratio you mentioned earlier, so I was simply shooting in 25-30 second bursts. Next time I'll change it up!



CarlTN said:


> At the risk of being criticized by the landscape photo police, you should have tried turning the camera sideways...since you are saying you missed some meteors overhead.
> 
> The color temperature of your Milky Way indeed is far too cool, but since it was intentional, I suppose it's a valid take on it. I've seen this look before. It's quite a nice shot...certainly the blue hue is appealing and draws one into the image. Of course if it's shot in RAW you can tweak on the color temperature however you wish later on.
> 
> If you are saying this was your first night sky shot..._like ever_...WOW that's quite a good result, no doubts about that!! You're on your way. I envy your Yosemite visit. It is a very highly traffic'ed park, though. For good reason, of course.



I had considered that, but to be more specific, the best ones we missed were all over; far to the left, right, so far overhead they were almost behind me, etc., so I left it. Plus I was shooting for timelapse, which I'll try to add shortly. What I did do is stop shooting at one point, and angle my camera much higher. 

And yes, I think the blue helps emphasize the stars/meteors, although I suppose some may disagree. I also prefer a bluer look than a warmer one; I wonder if people that prefer a warmer is partly because they're used to being closer to light pollution? And I did shoot in RAW, so I can tweak this repeatedly. Which I'll probably do, because I know I could edit the shots better than I did.

Thank you! I mainly shoot landscape and am used to some techniques which help (mirror lock up, on a tripod, shutter release, manual focus etc), plus I have shot at night before; some steel wool, light painting, catching streaks of car lights, stuff like that. But this was my first time trying to milky way & meteor shots. It's kind of silly that it is, since I have regular access to Yosemite (I can reach the entrance in about an hour), and I've been to places like Arches & Zion. I'll definitely try to do more night photography in the future & get better at it.


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## Cali_PH (Aug 16, 2013)

Here's a video of two timelapses I shot this weekend. Since the best & brightest streaks were 'off camera' I stopped part way through and tilted my camera up in hopes of catching more, although I didn't succeed. Still, I captured lots of the smaller streaks. Perseids was in the upper left, but we also saw a surprising number of meteors from other directions.

The lower right bump is Half Dome; you can see a couple of people coming down from it at the beginning and someone climb up & walk around on top later. 

Done with some top-notch video software...Windows Movie Maker


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## Click (Aug 16, 2013)

Cali_PH said:


> Here's a video of two timelapses I shot this weekend.



Awesome. Nice job !


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## jrista (Aug 16, 2013)

Cali_PH said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Great shot! Looks like you had some nice, dark skies. I would say 14mm is a great focal length for wide field night sky photography.
> ...



I guess it really depends on what your goals are as far as the ratio goes. If you want to include the milky way, and have the advantage of really dark skies, you could probably get away with a lot longer than 4-6 seconds. I don't really have any light-pollution-free dark areas within a reasonable driving distance, so shorter has been better for me so far. Seeing Cali_PH's timelapse, if you have nice, dark skies and want the milky way to be bright, I would say go for 20-30 seconds.


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## rpt (Aug 16, 2013)

Click said:


> Cali_PH said:
> 
> 
> > Here's a video of two timelapses I shot this weekend.
> ...


Lovely!


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## niteclicks (Aug 16, 2013)

I can't seem to get the video to play but if the pics with it are any indication I bet its great. I think the main key to the exposure time is to get the background off the bottom without clipping the top to much, which means the darker the sky the longer your exposure for any given iso. I have caught satellites on 3 min exposures that you couldn't see by eye that completely crossed the frame. Try a long exposure pointing towards Orion, its almost impossible to not catch a satellite in that part of the sky, at least for me.


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## niteclicks (Aug 16, 2013)

Schruminator said:


> This is a compilation of a few shots from the other night.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
very nice, I thought it always was cloudy in the UK. You a Tulsa guy or just a grad? I am just north of Tulsa.


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## Schruminator (Aug 16, 2013)

niteclicks said:


> very nice, I thought it always was cloudy in the UK. You a Tulsa guy or just a grad? I am just north of Tulsa.



Yeah, the UK can have some very pleasant weather but it is hit and miss. So when I saw we'd have clear skies, I knew I had to venture out for sure. Otherwise I'm a Tulsa grad and I have been living in the UK for 3+ years, but I'll be moving back to Tulsa in a few months if all goes well.


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## LOLID (Aug 16, 2013)

Maybe, I don't get it. No wait, I don't get it.

Import a decent night sky shot into photoshop. Select appropriate brush. Paint a few fine white lines. You get the same result in about 10s.


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## Rienzphotoz (Aug 16, 2013)

Cali_PH said:


> Here's a video of two timelapses I shot this weekend.
> Done with some top-notch video software...Windows Movie Maker


AWESOME


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## jrista (Aug 16, 2013)

LOLID said:


> Maybe, I don't get it. No wait, I don't get it.
> 
> Import a decent night sky shot into photoshop. Select appropriate brush. Paint a few fine white lines. You get the same result in about 10s.



I would be willing to bet you couldn't replicate how a meteor shower actually looks that way.

It isn't just about getting a photo, either. Its about *watching* a meteor shower. If you don't go out and watch it, you miss out on the chance to see hunks of space rock burn up as they enter the atmosphere at 30,000 miles per hour, or even better, see a bolide explode once it enters the atmosphere (a fairly rare event.)

You would also be stuck with the fact that your ultimately lying about your work. ;P


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## LOLID (Aug 17, 2013)

jrista said:


> LOLID said:
> 
> 
> > Maybe, I don't get it. No wait, I don't get it.
> ...


.


I do concur. I still remember an incredible meteor shower when I was 12 years old. Such event is very beautiful indeed.
But my futile point was that the result on a photo does not do justice to it and is aesthetically not very nice.
I want to emphasize that I was not in anyway criticizing the quality of the pics.


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## Cali_PH (Aug 19, 2013)

Thanks for the kind words folks, just wish I'd had left my camera in one spot all night, and stayed a bit closer to sunrise. Next time!


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## jrista (Aug 19, 2013)

Cali_PH said:


> Thanks for the kind words folks, just wish I'd had left my camera in one spot all night, and stayed a bit closer to sunrise. Next time!



Aye! At least "next time" ain't too far off. ;P Its only a couple months away. I really need to find a place free of light pollution. Your deep, dark skies are amazing. I'd love to capture galaxies like Andromeda and all that in a wide field shot (which is completely impossible where I've tried so far, even driving over 40 minutes out of town, which is over an hour away from Denver itself...)


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## Cali_PH (Aug 19, 2013)

jrista said:


> Aye! At least "next time" ain't too far off. ;P Its only a couple months away. I really need to find a place free of light pollution. Your deep, dark skies are amazing. I'd love to capture galaxies like Andromeda and all that in a wide field shot (which is completely impossible where I've tried so far, even driving over 40 minutes out of town, which is over an hour away from Denver itself...)



Thanks for that, looked it up and it I guess it's Orionids. Hmm...that's close to when the road up to Glacier Point where I shot this from may be closed, but probably not.

The thing is, the skies weren't even as good as normal, because of the local fires; there was a bit of haze in the air. So you're in the Denver area? I realize there'd be a lot of light pollution from the city, but in my ignorance I would have figured you could find spots closer; that's a shame! Maybe take a trip out to Zion or Arches? My friend and I are kicking ourselves for not trying night shooting when we were out there. Guess we just have to go back. 

EDIT - Just googled some info, and it sounds like a hunter's moon will wash out many of the meteors for that; I may still try to shoot it though, as it'll help light up foreground interest like Half Dome or something else.


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## CarlTN (Aug 28, 2013)

Cali_PH said:


> Here's a video of two timelapses I shot this weekend. Since the best & brightest streaks were 'off camera' I stopped part way through and tilted my camera up in hopes of catching more, although I didn't succeed. Still, I captured lots of the smaller streaks. Perseids was in the upper left, but we also saw a surprising number of meteors from other directions.
> 
> The lower right bump is Half Dome; you can see a couple of people coming down from it at the beginning and someone climb up & walk around on top later.
> 
> Done with some top-notch video software...Windows Movie Maker



Not bad!


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