Perseids Meteor Shower tonight......12th Aug

I saw 9 last night, scattered across the sky, far wider than my 18mm will go. I tried a couple of times now to get meteor showers and got very little to show for it. I'm not going to try and image it, just view it.
 
After midnight Andy... Saw my best one last night about 0030, bright and left a trail. A sun lounger works great as a meteor lounger. You want to be looking at around Cygnus (a bit to the east of directly overhead around midnight), relax and don't concentrate to hard on a single point, that way your peripheral vision works better and you'll sort of get a wider effective FOV (I'm sure there's a better way of describing that...;))
 
jgs001 said:
relax and don't concentrate to hard on a single point, that way your peripheral vision works better and you'll sort of get a wider effective FOV (I'm sure there's a better way of describing that...;))
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Made perfect sense (y) hope to see it down on the south coast :)
 
I am with you John......thinking of sun lounger and remote release on tripod right next to me ....focus on one part of the sky and relax.....we have a vista view point that pretty much has 220 degree views over the horizon and is at about 350 above sea so providing it is clear I may take a walk up there.....
 
jgs001 said:
After midnight Andy... Saw my best one last night about 0030, bright and left a trail. A sun lounger works great as a meteor lounger. You want to be looking at around Cygnus (a bit to the east of directly overhead around midnight), relax and don't concentrate to hard on a single point, that way your peripheral vision works better and you'll sort of get a wider effective FOV (I'm sure there's a better way of describing that...;))
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Cheers buddy.

I shall take your advise and dig the sun longer out!!
 
It's actually been going on for a few days, the shower lasts for something like a week, but it peaks tonight.

Fred, I found that 30 second exposures were too long, I was thinking, were I to have a try, that 10 seconds might be better. The meteor lasts for less than a second... as it streaks across the sky.

Good luck for clear skies all.
 
fridge said:
This may be a stupid question but would this show up in a wide landscape long exposure shot?

Thanks
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If the sky is black, just a thin streak of white I expect.
Weather has always frustrated my attempts just to look for these sort of events.
 
maninsuitcase said:
I might have a go at this, but have no idea where to start settings wise. Any pointers?

Be interesting with no shutter remote :confused:
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This sort of photography is way out of my comfort zone, but in your situation, I'd guess tripod mounted (obviously), mirror lock up and shutter release on a timer.

I might drive in to the middle of the New Forest to try and get some shots after going to the pub tonight.
 
I would say better, tripod mounted, minimum self timer (the 450d does 2 seconds) and keep firing as often as you can. it's much easier to set continuous shooting, and lock a remote shutter on mind you.
 
here's what i do with my 20d

focus on a bit of sky, on a tripod, f4 which is the quickest my 17-85 goes to, iso 800, 25 second exposure (dont get too much of a star trail then) multiple shots with the cable release locked on, i.e it will do a 25second shot, then another one, and another one etc. , then hope you got something in shot!

all i got last night was a load of sattelites!
 
Al de Man said:
I might drive in to the middle of the New Forest to try and get some shots after going to the pub tonight.
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My kind of plan !!
Only photograph I've ever had published (albeit only an in-house company mag) was after a visit to the bar. Long exposure with a Zenith E propped against the ships window captured about six bolts of lightning on one exposure. Good job the sea was calm that night.

I hope that I've improved since those early days - but as I've never had anything else published maybe I haven't.
 
csedgbeer said:
here's what i do with my 20d

focus on a bit of sky, on a tripod, f4 which is the quickest my 17-85 goes to, iso 800, 25 second exposure (dont get too much of a star trail then) multiple shots with the cable release locked on, i.e it will do a 25second shot, then another one, and another one etc. , then hope you got something in shot!

all i got last night was a load of sattelites!
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Chris, put all the frames into startrails... they won't be wasted then.
 
Fingers crossed for clear skies. I'll be camped out in the grounds of Chatsworth House, so hoping the light pollution will be minimal. One thing about digital - it doesn't matter how many images you take, nothing is wasted, not like film!

An astronomer friend explained to me his technique: take a picture at the same settings as your sky image, but with the lens cap on and the viewfinder covered - this dark image records the sensor noise, then layer the sky image and the dark image in photoshop with the dark image as the top layer and use layer properties set to difference to reduce the noise in the sky image. It may be necessary to play around with the opacity setting to get the best result.
 
For those who may be interested, Jupiter is visible in the lowish Eastern sky, and so are two of its moons ( seen through 8 x 56 binoculars) Gannymede and Callisto, slightly below and to the left of the planet.
I saw one very bright Perseid at about 1030 last night.
 
I was sat in a darkened clearing on Sunday night with a nephew. In half an hour we saw one very bright and more than half a dozen smaller ones, so fingers crossed tonight should be fantastic... weather permitting!
 
Do hope the skies clear, could do yet although its peeing down now

Was very cloudy here Tuesday evening, but couldn't sleep and sat outside having a cuppa and smoke about 4am, loads of stars, heavens were clear as a bell
 
The best place to get an idea of the weather in the short term is at http://sat24.com... real time satellite data... You get the previous 2 hours worth of weather images and make your own predictions. It works pretty well too.
 
Weather is pants here at the moment, its been pigging it down all day and doesn't look like its going to improve overnight
 
At around 4:47 am The ISS will be making a pass going west to east lowish on the southern horizon. Should be quite an interesting night, if it clears up!
 
Will probably be too cloudy where I am, although last night when I looked up I was amazed how bright and numerous the stars (and I assume some planets) were in the sky.
 
looking at the weather at the moment i am glad i was watching them last night (laying in the hot tub :))
saw three bright ones and lots of duller ones
 
saw it last year out in the country and it was spectacular (intermittent but amazing), next day I could still see and there were no triffids:cool:
 
Stray ......the link I posted for Hornet says about the use of a wide angle lens for it.....this is mainly for star trails as these meteors arent around for very long I am not even sure they will be captured.....but I would say wide angle would be good as more likely to get a lot in

Note - Saturn viewable in the west at the moment....Very Bright.......Well it is from where I am near sevenoaks......skies are clearing very well and very quickly so may be in for a show tonight

......Good luck if anybody does try to get some.......gonna give it a go myself.....
 
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