A good year for Leonids?

[Leo S]

On 23/11/2022 at 17:01, Leo S said:

You've probably heard me say before that, I think if I could have had another one or two cameras running, I'd have caught many large events

 

..or missing them because it's raining, or cloudy, like this one last night, which would have been perfectly placed for one of my cameras - both close/high in the sky, and within the FOV (assuming the trajectory is fairly accurate).

Instead, I got the "consolation bolide", in the distance, and behind branches, again! Quite a big one, and fast for a change - here's an image of it from UKMON:

[scotty1]

Those UKMON cameras seem quite sensitive, to get the same sensitivity on a DSLR taking stills, I'm thinking the ISO would be about 6400? 

Last night it looked like there were a few meteors on the UKMON near Orion. I had my camera with Orion in the frame taking 15sec exposures with ISO 1600 but nothing showed on my photos. Although I expect a bright meteor would show even at ISO 1600. 

I've used ISO 6400 if I'm away from town lights.

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by scotty1

[andrew63]

Those settings you've used with a DSLR camera sound capable of recording a good range of meteors to me? I've looked at the exposure that my iPhone sets in meteor mode, for this one it was ISO 2112 5.0s f1.8 and with a very limited phone sensor - not sure how bright this one is though.

[scotty1]

54 minutes ago, andrew63 said:

Those settings you've used with a DSLR camera sound capable of recording a good range of meteors to me? I've looked at the exposure that my iPhone sets in meteor mode, for this one it was ISO 2112 5.0s f1.8 and with a very limited phone sensor - not sure how bright this one is though.

Yes in town it's a battle between light pollution and enough ISO to pickup any meteors. There's so many satellites now, that it's easy to mistake one for a meteor when going through photos.  The meteor trails often have colours though.  

I took this about 2am last Tuesday, I'm not sure if it's a Leonid, or satellite. 

This was ISO 4000 f3.2 15 seconds.

Edited November 24, 2022 by scotty1

[andrew63]

That's a nice image,  yes it's hard to tell meteor or not - the Beehive Cluster stands out well.

[Leo S]

1 hour ago, scotty1 said:

Those UKMON cameras seem quite sensitive, to get the same sensitivity on a DSLR taking stills, I'm thinking the ISO would be about 6400? 

Last night it looked like there were a few meteors on the UKMON near Orion. I had my camera with Orion in the frame taking 15sec exposures with ISO 1600 but nothing showed on my photos. Although I expect a bright meteor would show even at ISO 1600. 

I've used ISO 6400 if I'm away from town lights.

 

Yes, the UKMON cameras are very sensitive. The images they produce do seem more impressive than when you actually visually observe the event, especially when the meteor is relatively close to the camera. I think they use a similar sensor to the a7SII that I use, but smaller, and because its only black and white, that will increase the sensitivity over the a7SII if I'm not mistaken. They should also be back side illuminated (BSI), and I believe (if memory serves) they are Sony Exmoor sensors. I could be wrong. There should be a page about their cameras if you look on the UKMON site, although I seem to remember having trouble with at least one link.

But be careful not to conflate ISO and sensitivity. Sensitivity is determined by the lens aperture, and the sensor itself. ISO, if increased, just makes things brighter in your image while increasing noise.

For long exposure imaging what I do is select the ISO that is not too noisy for me (usually 1600 on my older bodies or 3200 on newer ones) and set aperture wide open. Only then do I set exposure length so that the sky background looks OK. Preferably between 10-20 seconds. If I can't achieve a reasonable expose time between 10-30 seconds, then I look at compensating using ISO or aperture. It's not the same as DSO imaging where you want your image to look overly bright to the eye (before it's processes/stretched).

Slightly different with footage, since exposure (1/30s) is fixed, or rather, I wouldn't want to change it (except perhaps if I could get 1/60!) because it significantly affects the way the motion of the meteor looks in the footage.  The way I look at it, is that once I have all the other setting correct (set aperture wide open), the ISO is then adjusted so that the background looks right.

Either way, ISO usually needs lowering when light pollution becomes a problem, as you suggest - it is better to preserve your aperture (keep it wide open) if you can I think.

Where to aim is never easy to decide, even for me after decades of imaging meteors! But where I am now I don't have much choice. My advice would be:

If you are more concerned with catching them, than imaging them close (which will give you more detail in the meteor), then aim as low down in the sky as you can. You'll catch big events more frequently this way, but most will be a long way off.

If you want more detail, aim high/er - you'll miss most events, but the ones you do catch should look impressive.

Apart from that, obviously avoid very light polluted parts of the sky if you can.

I do sometimes get the feeling that they "cluster" just outside my camera's FOV's, but in reality it shouldn't matter which way you are aiming as they should be random in location - if we are talking about big sporadic events.

One thing that is perhaps relevant is that many of the big fireballs right now are in the evening, often early on (check out the "clusters" over the past few nights over/around the UK on the IMO fireball database). These are often big slow events, heading from west to east (much like the event I missed yesterday early on). They have radiants in western part of the sky in the evening (that set after midnight), meaning they are meteoroids which actually catch up with Earth, and hit it from behind in relation to the direction Earth travels in it's orbit around the Sun. Because of that, they enter the atmosphere much more slowly than other meteoroids approaching from different directions, and that means they start ablating ("burning" up) much lower down, penetrating more deeply, and because they are already slow, a much better chance of producing meteorites.

So aside from that, it might make sense to have your camera positioned to catch one going this way, if you want a side on view of it, and avoid pointing east.

PS. You can see here how the various speeds are affected by radiant positions in the sky, if you look at the diagrams.

 

[Leo S]

1 hour ago, scotty1 said:

Yes in town it's a battle between light pollution and enough ISO to pickup any meteors. There's so many satellites now, that it's easy to mistake one for a meteor when going through photos.  The meteor trails often have colours though.  

I took this about 2am last Tuesday, I'm not sure if it's a Leonid, or satellite. 

This was ISO 4000 f3.2 15 seconds.

I suspect that might be a Taurid, although I must admit I'm not sure which stars I'm looking at in your image. Still seeing quite a few (mostly not very bright) Taurids, as well as Leonids. Either way, it looks like a meteor in terms of shape, but more importantly, it seems to be quite long, for a satellite. Which lens/FL? Also, what time? If it was well away from Sun rise/set, then satellite is probably unlikely due to how far below the horizon the Sun is.

Oh, I just re-read/saw - you said "2am". Case closed then, it's a meteor

[scotty1]

It's from Pentax K5, Tamron 17-50 set to 17mm ISO 4000 f 3.2 15 seconds. 

[Leo S]

That looks about right for a Taurid looking at the location of the radiant here.

By the way, nice location to image from by the looks of it - low horizons. My only suggestion would be, cut down on the foreground a bit more to give yourself more sky. I'm often tempted to include more foreground, but unless it's particularly interesting (which usually means a reflective surface like water) I just have a little sliver!

Have had so much going on here I completely forgot to post that: there was No 2022 Leonid outburst detected

However, the prediction of bright meteors was effectively confirmed, so we know the timings are spot on.

[scotty1]

Hi Leo 

I really need two tripods🤔 , I had two cameras running, one on a tripod. And the other on my camera bag, that is why it has too much foreground, it was trying to slide off the bag. I have used a mini tripod before, that night It was holding my phone at the time. 

 

 

[Leo S]

3 hours ago, scotty1 said:

Hi Leo 

I really need two tripods🤔 , I had two cameras running, one on a tripod. And the other on my camera bag, that is why it has too much foreground, it was trying to slide off the bag. I have used a mini tripod before, that night It was holding my phone at the time. 

 

 

If your tripod is sturdy you could try one of these, which allows you to mount more than one camera to a single pod. I actually prefer the cheap Chinese copies (got mine from ebay) to the Manfrotto.