Perseid Meteor Shower Aug. 11-12 2013

jrista said:
LOLID said:
Maybe, I don't get it. No wait, I don't get it.

Import a decent night sky shot into photoshop. Select appropriate brush. Paint a few fine white lines. You get the same result in about 10s.

I would be willing to bet you couldn't replicate how a meteor shower actually looks that way.

It isn't just about getting a photo, either. Its about watching a meteor shower. If you don't go out and watch it, you miss out on the chance to see hunks of space rock burn up as they enter the atmosphere at 30,000 miles per hour, or even better, see a bolide explode once it enters the atmosphere (a fairly rare event.)

You would also be stuck with the fact that your ultimately lying about your work. ;P
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I do concur. I still remember an incredible meteor shower when I was 12 years old. Such event is very beautiful indeed.
But my futile point was that the result on a photo does not do justice to it and is aesthetically not very nice.
I want to emphasize that I was not in anyway criticizing the quality of the pics.
 
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Cali_PH said:
Thanks for the kind words folks, just wish I'd had left my camera in one spot all night, and stayed a bit closer to sunrise. Next time! ;)

Aye! At least "next time" ain't too far off. ;P Its only a couple months away. I really need to find a place free of light pollution. Your deep, dark skies are amazing. I'd love to capture galaxies like Andromeda and all that in a wide field shot (which is completely impossible where I've tried so far, even driving over 40 minutes out of town, which is over an hour away from Denver itself...)
 
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jrista said:
Aye! At least "next time" ain't too far off. ;P Its only a couple months away. I really need to find a place free of light pollution. Your deep, dark skies are amazing. I'd love to capture galaxies like Andromeda and all that in a wide field shot (which is completely impossible where I've tried so far, even driving over 40 minutes out of town, which is over an hour away from Denver itself...)

Thanks for that, looked it up and it I guess it's Orionids. Hmm...that's close to when the road up to Glacier Point where I shot this from may be closed, but probably not.

The thing is, the skies weren't even as good as normal, because of the local fires; there was a bit of haze in the air. So you're in the Denver area? I realize there'd be a lot of light pollution from the city, but in my ignorance I would have figured you could find spots closer; that's a shame! Maybe take a trip out to Zion or Arches? My friend and I are kicking ourselves for not trying night shooting when we were out there. Guess we just have to go back. ;)

EDIT - Just googled some info, and it sounds like a hunter's moon will wash out many of the meteors for that; I may still try to shoot it though, as it'll help light up foreground interest like Half Dome or something else.
 
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Feb 1, 2013
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Cali_PH said:
Here's a video of two timelapses I shot this weekend. Since the best & brightest streaks were 'off camera' I stopped part way through and tilted my camera up in hopes of catching more, although I didn't succeed. Still, I captured lots of the smaller streaks. Perseids was in the upper left, but we also saw a surprising number of meteors from other directions.

The lower right bump is Half Dome; you can see a couple of people coming down from it at the beginning and someone climb up & walk around on top later.

Done with some top-notch video software...Windows Movie Maker ;)


Not bad!
 
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