Pole Star Trails, Planes & Perseids
Last night's attempt at capturing some Perseid meteors, just two bright trails in this image made from 229 exposures of 30 seconds each. Plenty of activity from Gatwick Airport and a decent set of star trails, lighting courtesy of a nearly full moon.
From dusk tonight, 12th August, into the morning of the 13th should be the peak of the meteor shower, the weather is looking good and it should be warm under the night sky.
All that is needed is a camera, wide or standard zoom lens, a tripod and a reasonably dark sky. My usual settings are manual exposure, 30 seconds, f2.8 or f4, ISO 100 or 200, drive mode set to the fastest possible on your camera, carefully manual focus at infinity, a remote release (cable or wireless if available) set to continuous release which should minimise gaps between exposures and something comfortable to sit on.
Using a fine .jpg setting helps to keep the total file size to a manageable level for subsequent processing. StarStax and Affinity Photo are my usual choices for post processing, but there is a huge range of software available to use.
Good luck, hope you manage to see and capture loads of meteors.
Pole Star Trails, Planes & Perseids
Last night's attempt at capturing some Perseid meteors, just two bright trails in this image made from 229 exposures of 30 seconds each. Plenty of activity from Gatwick Airport and a decent set of star trails, lighting courtesy of a nearly full moon.
From dusk tonight, 12th August, into the morning of the 13th should be the peak of the meteor shower, the weather is looking good and it should be warm under the night sky.
All that is needed is a camera, wide or standard zoom lens, a tripod and a reasonably dark sky. My usual settings are manual exposure, 30 seconds, f2.8 or f4, ISO 100 or 200, drive mode set to the fastest possible on your camera, carefully manual focus at infinity, a remote release (cable or wireless if available) set to continuous release which should minimise gaps between exposures and something comfortable to sit on.
Using a fine .jpg setting helps to keep the total file size to a manageable level for subsequent processing. StarStax and Affinity Photo are my usual choices for post processing, but there is a huge range of software available to use.
Good luck, hope you manage to see and capture loads of meteors.