Comet 209P/Linear Meteor Shower

JPAZ

If only I knew what I was doing.....
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Sep 7, 2012
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Southwest USA
All,

I was ready. Had my 14mm f/2.8, my remote, my tripod and my new gimbal. Got the times from news articles. Got the coordinates (local time midnight with compass 348 and az 28 degrees. Even used my iPhone app to make sure the direction to the constellation Camelopardis was where I thought it should be. And I got.....

NADA.

I expected light pollution (could not get out of town) and was concerned because of the fires in Northern Arizona and the articulate that would be on the Northern horizon. But, no streaks / meteors at all over 2 hours. Anybody see anything?
 
Went to the Blue Ridge Parkway at 1 AM., dark enough, still with some glow from the city, barely any clouds. Had some other friends there, too. Stayed till 3. Got too chilly, fingers were stiff. The batteries in the remote shutter failed. So packed up and left.
I did see ONE, just for 1/2 of a second.
Another guy stayed till 5. He said he saw one also. Another friend, who was at another site, said he saw 5!
All the news hype, just fizzled.
Well, I got a few of the Milky Way. Shot with 5D3, Rokinon 14 mm, I think ISO 1600, 30 seconds, I think (had to count mentally, the remote was dead). F/stop may be 5.6, can't see EXIF from iPAD.
-r
 

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lion rock said:
Went to the Blue Ridge Parkway at 1 AM., dark enough, still with some glow from the city, barely any clouds. Had some other friends there, too. Stayed till 3. Got too chilly, fingers were stiff. The batteries in the remote shutter failed. So packed up and left.
I did see ONE, just for 1/2 of a second.
Another guy stayed till 5. He said he saw one also. Another friend, who was at another site, said he saw 5!
All the news hype, just fizzled.
Well, I got a few of the Milky Way. Shot with 5D3, Rokinon 14 mm, I think ISO 1600, 30 seconds, I think (had to count mentally, the remote was dead). F/stop may be 5.6, can't see EXIF from iPAD.
-r

Apparently, most of the people who did watch it said there were only 2-8 visible meteors. :-\
 
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So I feel a little better. I did not miss much. Here's the good news. I really like the new Gimbal.

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=20972.0

It performed perfectly and I got to spend some quality time with my remote shutter honing my night sky photography skills. Here's a jpeg (sorry about the compression artifact) showing about what I saw all night. With some post, I could make this a better looking photo but it would still be bad. Next time I set out to do a night sky shoot, I'll try to get out of town for better (or should I say less) light pollution.
 

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I ventured out tonight to capture Saturn and started with a 30 second exposure, which gave me a big line, I halved it and still a line, I dropped to 5 seconds and still line shaped, eventually I shot at.5, it shocked the life out of me how fast the sky objects actually move!!
That was a lesson learned :'(
 
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TheJock said:
I ventured out tonight to capture Saturn and started with a 30 second exposure, which gave me a big line, I halved it and still a line, I dropped to 5 seconds and still line shaped, eventually I shot at.5, it shocked the life out of me how fast the sky objects actually move!!
That was a lesson learned :'(

While the objects in the sky are moving, they're moving very slowly. However, the Earth is moving much faster, causing objects to "move" across the sky. There are a lot of options to counteract the Earth's movement, a gud option would be an EQ mount. :)
 
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This is what I came up with for about 45 minutes worth of photos that night:

Meteors & Planes by yorgasor, on Flickr

This was taken on May 24th, the night of a new meteor shower. I was hoping to see dozens of meteors, but during this 45 minute session, my camera only caught a couple. The most prominent line in here is the plane, with the blinking light.

But the three prominent green streaks near the middle I'm pretty certain was caused by a meteor. There is another pair of faint, green lights to the left of those, about halfway between the left edge of the photo and the three prominent streaks.

Finally, on the very right edge of the photo, about 1/4th of the way down from the top, there's another faint line, pointed towards the north star.
 
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