Perseid Meteor Shower-Thursday and Friday Night

Ricky91t

Clear skies in Kerry, and i've been laying here for 20 minutes admiring the sky and totally forgot where about in the night sky these thing will most commonly be seen?

My windows facing North east (30 degrees) is that any good?

Edit: Woah just saw one! That was a lot more impressive than I thought

Mountainsandh

Hi Ricky91t, I'm just about to set up shop outside myself, clear skies here too. I've no fancy equipment, just my Pentax K-x and a tripod, so I'll just set it for longer exposures with the 2 or 10 secs timer, and see if anything turns out ok. It's a long shot (gettit ? )
I think they say it's supposed to be mostly North, but then again, I've read that really it could come from anywhere.

magicbastarder

if you draw a line back from each one, they'll tend to intersect around perseus, but can be pretty much anywhere in the sky.

Jackobyte

Just spent the last hour and a half outside. Tried some really long exposures to get star trails. Tried 15 minutes at ISO800 and F5.6 and I got cool results. Then, trying to make the trails longer I doubled the time and halved the ISO thinking they would counteract each other on brightness, leaving the aperture the same. I was wrong, it ended up being totally blown out and really brown and horrible. Waste of 30 minutes.

Really clear skies here but very low meteor count. In the hour and a half, I only saw about 5 or 6.

whyulittle

Spent about an hour looking out over Lough Ree, but only managed to spot 2 or 3.

Mountainsandh

plane2 by mountainsandheather, on Flickr
Nahh... plane, but could we just pretend it is one ? Just don't tell anyone, I froze my butt for about an hour and a half ffs !
I did see around a dozen, all sizes, speed, colour, short trail, long trail... but none passed across my viewfinder.

Ricky91t

I very Nearly went ousted last night and took some photos but luckily I need my camera today so it put me off, I saw four in about 30minutes 2 of those were very faint and it was a kinda right place at the right time scenario, the third would of probably shown up pretty well on a long exposure. But the other one I saw was the most impressive and would of came out well, I wasn't even looking near it but noticed something glowing brightly out the corner of my eye, when I turned around it wa still getting brighter and then it began to fade.

charybdis

I'm pretty sure I caught one, despite the light pollution and the relatively narrow angle-of-view of a 28mm lens on an APS-C camera. I had set the camera up on a tripod at 10s f/2.8 ISO 400 and hooked up a cheap eBay shutter release that could be locked to "on" so that it would keep taking photos until it ran out of card space, battery, or it was interrupted. I let it run for about 30 minutes then reviewed what it had captured. I'm pretty sure I have a few frames of a satellite passing overhead, but I also got what looks very much like a Perseid:



Not exactly exquisite astrophotography.

Mountainsandh

No but cool all the same . Just wouldn't have the energy to set all up again tonight but I've got clear skies out again I think. Just wish something had crossed my viewfinder when I was doing the remote job yesterday (timer 2 seconds, 30 secs exposure, press .... wait. press.... wait. press.... wait. And all that for one lousy plane :mad:)

whyulittle

Very faint one over on the left middle from last night.

hmboards

charybdis wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I caught one, despite the light pollution and the relatively narrow angle-of-view of a 28mm lens on an APS-C camera.

Now that's what I was hoping to capture! Well done.

I had set the camera up on a tripod at 10s f/2.8 ISO 400 and hooked up a cheap eBay shutter release that could be locked to "on" so that it would keep taking photos until it ran out of card space, battery, or it was interrupted. I let it run for about 30 minutes then reviewed what it had captured.

You mean you weren't standing out in the freezing cold ? That's cheating

hmboards

Jackobyte wrote: »

I was wrong, it ended up being totally blown out and really brown and horrible. Waste of 30 minutes.

If you shot RAW, try setting the WB to tunsgten in PP. The brown sounds like light pollution from tungsten lighting.