I set up my camera on an intervalometer to catch meteors during the Perseid Meteor shower last night. The results were not impressive, but they were not completely fruitless. I managed to catch one small meteor over the two hours of images taken. No giant fireballs here, sorry. It is a short yellow stripe, longer and in a different direction from the star trails. In the featured image I have it enlarged a great deal. Here’s the in-camera version:
Perseid Meteor. Look closely!
Another cool thing I was able to do was to create a time lapse movie of the images I took. Some clouds pass over head. This was taken in my back yard, where the only clear view of the sky is directly overhead. I am also in the suburbs of a major city, so light pollution is a significant problem, especially anywhere near the horizon. You can see it in the yellowish glow of the night sky. I was recently in a rural, dark sky area, which was much easier to work with.
I am using a Tokina 11-16mm ultra wide angle lens, set at 16mm. ISO 3200, f/2.8. Exposure was 30 seconds each, triggered every 1 minute, 30 seconds. The long interval was necessary because it takes over 30 seconds for my Nikon D90 to process the long exposure. It is extended because I have in-camera high ISO noise reduction and long exposure noise reduction active. I think most of the noise here is actually from the light pollution rather than the camera itself. In the time-lapse you can see that the white dots are genuine stars rather than long exposure pixel issues.
Here’s the time-lapse movie version of my Perseid Meteor Shower, Singular. It’s pretty small in this embedded version. Click through to the youtube version for a better look.
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