Perseoids

ByMatt

Star Trails

Every summer at early-mid August, we enter a portion of the solar system rife with meteors, and ever year around this time, many of those chunks of rock and debris hit our atmosphere and burn up, giving us the Perseoid meteor shower. This year, the shower did not occur during a full moon, and so the skies were dark and the stars were bright.

Some of the photo club folks wanted to have a camping trip this weekend, and that devolved into a fire and star photography night at our place. The meteor shower was pretty good Saturday night. There have been lots of big meteors that leave trails that hang around for seconds after the main chunk had burned up. And they came quite often. If you stared at any one part of the sky, you were bound to see one within 20 minutes.

The star photography was so-so, at least for me. Its the same view from my back yard every time, so I’d like a change of foreground. I’m also stuck with the same problems every time: I need a wide lens that can open up wider than f/2.8, and I need a camera with useable image quality at high ISO’s (faster than iso 1600). So until I have that combination, I’m not likely to get any clearer images of the sky than I have previously.

I did experiment with long exposure star trails. I left the shutter open for over an hour which pretty much killed a fresh battery. The problem with long exposures and digital cameras is that the sensor heats up leading to extra noise in the image. This is where film photography has the advantage. Plus, older film cameras don’t even consume battery while the shutter is open, so you can expose an image all night if desired.

I think one hour is my limit with my current set up. The better option is to stack a series of shorter images which has the added advantage of cancelling out the random noise. However, and intervelometer is necessary to pull off a series of 30-second or 1-minute back-to-back exposures. So, I will continue to work within my limitations while admiring the images from those with more capability. In the mean time, here is my 67 minute exposure. Each star trail should be about 1/24th of a full circle, or an arc angle of about \frac{\pi}{12}.

Similar Posts

  • LaTeX

        This semester, one of my classes has required me to turn in all of my assignments in LaTeX. LaTeX (la-tek) is built on TeX, a typesetting language meant to produce beautiful documents reminiscent of the days when papers were printed from engraved plates. Typesetting was an art that got lost in the digital age. When I first got the news that assignments were to be handed in using LaTeX, I admit I was a bit worried. The assignments were already going to be difficult enough since it is a bioinformatics class working with data types I have not…

  • Puppies for Sale

    The puppies are now over 8 weeks old and oh so cute. As you can imagine, seven growing pups indoors can create quite a mess that is hard to keep on top of. On top of that, any time you step into their room, they all mob you for attention. So, as spring weather has descended upon the Palouse, we found scrap lumber and fencing and built an outdoor playpen for the dogs. So far it is doing the job. It’s also giving the pups some much needed fresh air and sunshine, which in turn tires them out so all…

  • A much needed update

    View on Kennedy Peak Originally uploaded by Matthew Singer. Wow. I realized I haven’t updated this place in quite some time. A lot has happened in the past year. I went back to Ferry Beach (www.fbes.org) in the fall and had some fun on the coast of Maine with weekends in the White Mountains again. I spent the winter in Hagerstown unsuccessfully looking for a job. And now I’ve finally found one in Luray, Va with the Sheridan School’s Mountain Campus (www.mountaincampus.org). I work at a facility nestled up against Shenandoah National Park, and literally somewhere in the photo above….

  • |

    Aurora

      This story begins Friday night when I learned that a large coronal mass ejection (CME) sent a burst of solar radiation from the sun headed toward Earth. It was predicted to intercept our atmosphere on the evening of the 8th, producing auroral activity in the high latitudes. Given the size of this solar storm, as described by spaceweather.com, I was a bit suspicious that the auroras migh be big enough to see all the way down here in northern Idaho. So, I kept a watch looking for evidence of such activity. On the evening of the 8th, I checked…

  • Photographing Birds on the Farm

    Fox sparrow Passerella iliaca White-crowned sparrow Zonotrichia leucophrys Northern cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis Today I took the camera out to photograph the birds. We’ve got a feeder in the front yard, but all the birds flock to the seed spilled on the ground. So I threw the dogs inside, scattered a can of seed on the ground, sat and waited. It didn’t take long for the birds to come in. Around the farm, I’ve been mostly seeing the usual winter birds: Cardinals, Chickadees, Titmice, Carolina Wren, Junco, Song Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, and some non-feeder birds: American Crow, Raven, Black and Turkey…