Shooting Stars - HELP!!!!!!

[snatcher]

Been informed that there should be a good display of meteorites here in the UK 12th August - weather permitting.

Just after some tips on getting a few good shots of them ie,settings

My camera is a 400D and my lens is a Sigma 18 - 200mm

Thanks in advance :)

John

[hollis_f]

Unfortunately the peak activity is predicted for Wednesday afternoon, about 16:00. Luckily the swarm is fairly spread out, so there should be meteors (not meteorites - they have to hit the ground to become one of them) on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights with a reasonable frequency (one every few minutes). There's also a fairly bright Moon to contend with so only the brighter ones will show up. Best time is between midnight and dawn, although I've seen Perseids at any time of night.

I've never tried meteors but, if the weather's fine, I may try setting up my wide-angle lens and use that at 10mm. Shoot manual, f3.5, 5s, ISO 400 and use the remote to get it to shoot continuous. Set the lens to manual focus at infinity, stick the whole lot on a tripod and point it NNE (trying to put a tree between me and The Moon and away from the local light pollution).

Those are guesses for the exposure. I'll look at the first shot and see how bright the moonlight is. If I can get away with it I'd prefer a longer exposure to try and get more stars in the shot.

Then it's just a matter of stepping through each exposure looking for the bright streaks.

[Adrena1in]

Might give this a try myself. NNE from my garden is rubbish though, thanks to the 40-foot trees right there!!

[hollis_f]

Might give this a try myself. NNE from my garden is rubbish though, thanks to the 40-foot trees right there!!

I'm only going in that direction because it minimises obstacles like trees and it's away from the main source of light pollution.

[A.S.I.G.N. Observatory]

Look up the shower on Heavens above.com

Use your wide angle lens and center it on the radiant (the point from which the storm approaches from)

Depending on how dark your sky is, you should be able to open your shutter for 30 seconds at a time on a static tripod with no star trails apparent.

As soon as you are done with a 30 second exposure, open it again. Do this all night and you should capture a few.

If you use an intervalometer, you have the added bonus that you can do a time-lapse too!

If you watch my time lapse vids, you will see a few meteorites caught on some frames as the sky rolls over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naS0WgIQj-A&feature=channel

Happy hunting!


Baz.

[hollis_f]

Look up the shower on Heavens above.com

Use your wide angle lens and center it on the radiant (the point from which the storm approaches from)

The problem is that the radiant is very close to where the Moon is :confused: So there's a compromise between getting all the meteors and being able to have a long exposure. That's why I'm shooting off to one side.

[A.S.I.G.N. Observatory]

The problem is that the radiant is very close to where the Moon is :confused: So there's a compromise between getting all the meteors and being able to have a long exposure. That's why I'm shooting off to one side.
Ah well, just pick another part of the sky and hope to get the meteors everyone else misses!

Otherwise, there are other showers every month.

Baz.

[snatcher]

Thanks for the advice team. Will give it a go :)

John

[timmyeatchips]

How bright is a typical meteor trail in comparison to the moon? Is it feasible to get an exposure of the moon that isn't too blown out and still capture meteors?

(or an image where the moon is blown but the glow doesn't wipe out the meteor trails?)

[boufa]

In short... no. The random nature of the shooting stars means that you will have to keep your shutter open for a while, I have seen from 10 - 30 seconds at the quickest, and several minutes if you are in a dark area, and do not mind star trails.

To meter the moon, you would need exposures in the fractions of a second. There would be no practical way to expose for both in the same shot.

[hollis_f]

Well, the skies are clear here and the Moon isn't too bad. Just taken approx 1 hours worth of 30 second exposures. Seen two pretty bright meteors in the 5 minutes after I setup (midges are too bad to stay outside). Guess I'll see if I caught anything in the morning.

Still, should be able to get some, admittedly short, star trails. And I'll try stacking the images just to see what comes out.

[snatcher]

I was so dissapointed - both nights were very cloudy. Oh well next time :)

John