Saturday: 18 November 2006
I was up around 3am, and braved the cold weather ten or fifteen minutes at a time to watch for meteors. There wasn’t a huge amount of excitement but I did see a few bright ones and a dozen fainter ones that appeared to emanate from Leo.
If you’re under clear dark skies, you might consider photography. That’s what I’ll be doing. Right now the skies are a deep deep blue, with no indication from this reliable forecaster that there will be passing clouds in the next 12-24 hours.
Direction, exposure time, field of view, stability, focus, and aperture!
Direction: Whereever you want, but you might as well point it to where the meteors are coming from, the radiant, to begin with. It’s smack in the head of Leo. There will be three stars, directly east, about halfway up the sky by 3am (and lower down, earlier). One will actually be yellowish Saturn and the other white Regulus; orange Algieba is dimmer, but they’re easy to spot.
But don’t get your pannies in a wad over it - just point the camera east and up.
Exposure time: Paramount is the need for a stable camera that can be set to expose for perhaps 30 seconds. 30 seconds is a good choice - long enough to potentially catch something that just happens by, and not so long that it heats up the CCD detector too much (your camera will limit you, don’t worry) and you get noise and the stars become streaks. If your skies aren’t dark, you may not be able to expose for that long without getting a white field.
Field of view: Make whatever adjustments are necessary for as wide a field of view as possible, whether it involves screwing the SLR down or changing lenses. The wider the field of view, the more likely you are to catch something.
Stability: It would be nice if you had a cable release but it’s not really necessary. Make sure the camera’s battery is well-charged, if it’s a digital. Mount it on a tripod if at all possible, or set it up in a stable position viewing the upper eastern skies.
Focus: Set the camera focus to infinity.
Aperture: If you have the option of manual settings, set the f-stop to the lowest setting (that is, the largest aperture).
Sensitivity: If you have the ability to set your camera’s ISO, set it somewhere between 500 and 800 to up the sensitivity, but not too much, or you’ll get noise, and doggone it, noise sometimes can look just like a meteor!
I plan to set mine up on a tripod next to me. I’ll aim it at the sky, and then just press the shutter every minute or so, guessing that I might get lucky. I’ll try it out for awhile in the late evening to make sure everything is ok, make whatever adjustments are required, and then be ready for the real show from 11:45pm to 2am, and after.
Be aware that most cameras use a lot of battery keeping the shutter open, and that your batteries will be drained faster than they would in conventional daylight shots.
I expect to throw away hundreds of images. That’s how you take meteor shots.
If you’re under clear dark skies, you might consider photography. That’s what I’ll be doing. Right now the skies are a deep deep blue, with no indication from this reliable forecaster that there will be passing clouds in the next 12-24 hours.
Direction, exposure time, field of view, stability, focus, and aperture!
Direction: Whereever you want, but you might as well point it to where the meteors are coming from, the radiant, to begin with. It’s smack in the head of Leo. There will be three stars, directly east, about halfway up the sky by 3am (and lower down, earlier). One will actually be yellowish Saturn and the other white Regulus; orange Algieba is dimmer, but they’re easy to spot.
But don’t get your pannies in a wad over it - just point the camera east and up.
Exposure time: Paramount is the need for a stable camera that can be set to expose for perhaps 30 seconds. 30 seconds is a good choice - long enough to potentially catch something that just happens by, and not so long that it heats up the CCD detector too much (your camera will limit you, don’t worry) and you get noise and the stars become streaks. If your skies aren’t dark, you may not be able to expose for that long without getting a white field.
Field of view: Make whatever adjustments are necessary for as wide a field of view as possible, whether it involves screwing the SLR down or changing lenses. The wider the field of view, the more likely you are to catch something.
Stability: It would be nice if you had a cable release but it’s not really necessary. Make sure the camera’s battery is well-charged, if it’s a digital. Mount it on a tripod if at all possible, or set it up in a stable position viewing the upper eastern skies.
Focus: Set the camera focus to infinity.
Aperture: If you have the option of manual settings, set the f-stop to the lowest setting (that is, the largest aperture).
Sensitivity: If you have the ability to set your camera’s ISO, set it somewhere between 500 and 800 to up the sensitivity, but not too much, or you’ll get noise, and doggone it, noise sometimes can look just like a meteor!
I plan to set mine up on a tripod next to me. I’ll aim it at the sky, and then just press the shutter every minute or so, guessing that I might get lucky. I’ll try it out for awhile in the late evening to make sure everything is ok, make whatever adjustments are required, and then be ready for the real show from 11:45pm to 2am, and after.
Be aware that most cameras use a lot of battery keeping the shutter open, and that your batteries will be drained faster than they would in conventional daylight shots.
I expect to throw away hundreds of images. That’s how you take meteor shots.
