Meteor showers

[cal72]

Early hours of Saturday morning.
Whats the chances of getting anything on camera?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-1450...

[nellyleelephant]

Entirely possible, but the bright moon won't help.

Wouls probably have been better a week ago when the moon was not up / new.

[14-7]

Given the entire UK seems to be covered with cloud at the moment my hopes are high

Anyone know if these meteor showers are continuing over the next week or two? I'm in southern Spain for a week then northern Spain for a week in quite remote areas so hoping to get some decent star shots.

[nellyleelephant]

14-7 said:

Given the entire UK seems to be covered with cloud at the moment my hopes are high

Anyone know if these meteor showers are continuing over the next week or two? I'm in southern Spain for a week then northern Spain for a week in quite remote areas so hoping to get some decent star shots.

They've already been going for a couple of weeks I think. Saturday is the most active night, but give it a week and you should still see some.

[AndWhyNot]

If the clouds clear, you want to point your camera in the general direction of Polaris, that's where the Perseids appear to emanate from.

It's galling to know there's meteors left and right when you're shooting with a narrow field of view so pick your widest fast lens. Ideal settings would be iso1600 and f/2.8 with exposure time adjusted to allow for the brightness of the sky/ full moon.

Fortunately the moon is quite low and in the opposite direction to where you need to be shooting.

Both battery life and memory card should allow for an hour or more continuous shooting, then stack the result in the StarStaX freeware or use one frame as a base layer and copy in just the meteors

Edited by AndWhyNot on Friday 12th August 16:18

[CarMac]

On the off chance that there's not much cloud, what's the best way to photograph meteor showers?

Does shutter speed need to be fast or slow?

Edited by CarMac on Friday 12th August 19:01

[AndWhyNot]

As above - go for the longest exposure you can at the settings I've suggested - you might get as long as 30 seconds but more likely 10-15 seconds. Shoot consecutively for continuous coverage.

Full cloud cover here though

[baz7175]

I drove South East of here for 90mins to hopefully catch the perseids over Mount Hood with Trillium Lake reflecting it all in the foreground, only for it to cloud over too...followed by a rather grumpy 4am drive back to my hotel afterwards

[CarMac]

Was a very cloudy sky here too so didn't get to try.

[russ_a]

Had a quick look about 1am and the Sky was still rather bright from the Moon so didn't see anything.

Somebody did have 'You to me are everything' blasting out on their back garden though!