Perseid bulls eye

[Marvin Jenkins]

Set the alarm clock for 3:30am and slept in the front room so as to allow my wife an unbroken nights sleep. Planned to have an hour looking at the Perseid Meteor shower as I missed it due to cloud last time around. I have recently bought a cable release for my Nikon D3100 so set it up on a tripod in the top field, pushed the ISO to 3200, aperture to f3.5 and exposure to 30 seconds.

Had some awful results due to focus problems, these auto focus lenses have so little movement from close to infinity it's like having the whole volume of your HiFi between zero and one. Saw at least thirty streaks with three being in my field of view. The attached is the best and a direct hit in the forehead of Taurus, obviously nothing to do with skill as this is my first time doing longish, wide field photography.

I played around with colour and tone a little as my RAW images were quite orange. If it is clear tonight I will put the DSLR on my NEQ5 and use tracking and an Intervalometer. Anyone out there have any advice as to f stop, ISO rating as I plan exposures of at least a couple of minutes if not more.

Marvin 

[Davey-T]

Good catch Marvin, our turn to be clouded out last night.

Dave

[maw lod qan]

Wonderful!

So nice catching a meteor with a constellation!

[daz]

I am rubbish at meteors! Guarantee they will be in the opposite direction, or some huge ones while I am fiddling with the gear!!

Still, will no doubt try again on Saturday if the forecast is not lying!!

[Bukko]

Nice capture.

And well done on the early start !!

I have been frustrated with focussing on a DSLR; mine is a Canon and the newer STM lenses seem to have lowered the importance of manual focus leading me to waste a lot of time...

The image posted looks reasonably sharp with the expected star drift. Getting it on your EQ5 and tracking will sharpen the stars and make them a lot brighter too. The meteor does not look over-bright, so the camera settings are fine, but have a look at the same exposure time once you are tracking... Often the sharpness will drop off towards the edges amd it is a great test of the lense..

Gordon.

[Stub Mandrel]

Don;'t make the exposures too long - faint meteors disappear into the skyglow.

[Marvin Jenkins]

Thanks for comments, I will take it all on board. Tonight has clouded over and turned stormy, so no more pictures for now.

Thanks Neil, I did notice that there is a smaller much fainter streak off the end of zeta tauri. Amazed at what can be seen from a focal length of 18mm, NGC 1647, NGC1750 and towards Gemini is that the Jellyfish nebula?

Please correct me if I am wrong as I am trying to match Michael Vaslov deep sky hunter star atlas to the photo.

Marv

[Marvin Jenkins]

6 hours ago, daz said:

I am rubbish at meteors! Guarantee they will be in the opposite direction, or some huge ones while I am fiddling with the gear!!

Still, will no doubt try again on Saturday if the forecast is not lying!!

One thirty second exposure after another until something whizzes by. Nothing happens, delete and start again. Perhaps the key is spare batteries and huge memory cards.

[Marvin Jenkins]

3 hours ago, Bukko said:

Nice capture.

And well done on the early start !!

I have been frustrated with focussing on a DSLR; mine is a Canon and the newer STM lenses seem to have lowered the importance of manual focus leading me to waste a lot of time...

The image posted looks reasonably sharp with the expected star drift. Getting it on your EQ5 and tracking will sharpen the stars and make them a lot brighter too. The meteor does not look over-bright, so the camera settings are fine, but have a look at the same exposure time once you are tracking... Often the sharpness will drop off towards the edges amd it is a great test of the lense..

Gordon.

Thanks for the advice. I was brought up on old school ‘film cameras’ without auto focus (Olympus OM10 in early eighties silver)

I am going to the UK sometime after the new year if planes can still fly by then and will be on the look out for wide angle, manual focus, prime lenses that are DX fit, should solve the problem.

M

[Stub Mandrel]

39 minutes ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

One thirty second exposure after another until something whizzes by. Nothing happens, delete and start again. Perhaps the key is spare batteries and huge memory cards.

My dual battery hand grip is good for about 3-4 hours. A 16GB card is good for 3 or four sessions with the 450D.

[maw lod qan]

I've even gone to an adapter for my Canon I can plug in to an extension cord.