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

  • Another conference, how about that?

    Somehow, I managed to go to two conferences in one semester. Tomorrow, I’ll be heading to Port Townsend, WA along with several other members of the department for the bi-annual Evo-WIBO conference. This is a small, regional conference for evolutionary biologists in the Pacific Northwest. There are only going to be around 200 or so people attending (compared to the 2-3000 at SICB), and there is only one talk session at a time. So lucky me, I got chosen to give an oral presentation. Did I mention it’s a small conference? It begins Saturday morning and ends Sunday at noon….

  • Website Update

    If you’re reading this on the website, you won’t see much of a difference. But I just upgraded WordPress to version 3.1 and upgraded the theme. The result is a better integration with the Gallery plugin. The galleries should now fit with the look of the site. Enjoy.

  • Garden Update

    For the past month, we’ve been able to enjoy some of the produce coming out of the garden. The lettuce has been producing beautiful and tasty leaves. There’s nothing like a freshly-picked salad. One of the lettuces has flowered and will soon go to seed. I think we will let it mature in an attempt to collect seeds to plant for next year. However, the rest of the heads continue to produce leaves to pick. Back when the chickens ate my lettuce to the ground, I planted more seeds in case the plants didn’t come back. Well, they did come…

  • Smoke in the Air

    Where have I been the last three weeks? To put it lightly, I have been choking on smoke. Since returning from the Seven Devils trip over Labor Day Weekend, the wildfires in the northwest, particularly in Idaho, have flared up. A fire south of the Devils appeared as well as a large fire just outside of Riggins. There have been some smaller fires near Grangeville and Lewiston to add to the mess. Winds from the south have blown all that smoke into the Lewiston-Clarkston valley and onto the Palouse where the smoke has been so thick at times, you could…

  • Latah County Fair

    Clara loves animals. At home, she loves to pet the dogs and the cats. She tries to pet the chickens and gets all excited when we catch one and bring it over to her. She loves saying hi to the goats and touching the horses. So we brought her to the Latah County Fair where she could look at and touch a whole host of other animals that we don’t have on our property. But rather than write about this, I thought I’d change things up and record this account on video.

  • Fall Foliage

    I’ve been spending a lot of time finishing up my dissertation proposal, which is due in a little over a week, and that has kept me from taking time to enjoy the outdoors. We got some considerable rain over the past weekend which lead to some dramatic skies and really clear views on Monday and Tuesday, but I just wasn’t able to take advantage of the nice conditions. I did get out for a little bit yesterday afternoon to check out the fall foliage in the arboretum on campus. In Idaho, we don’t see very much fall color. There are…