[uday029]

Hello all,

Let me begin with saying that I am a total newbie. I recently started capturing milky way (still learning) and been trying to do star trails. That is the extent of astrophotography I know.

Me and couple of my friends are planning to camp somewhere near Black Rock Desert (has good dark skies)on Aug 14th weekend to watch Perseid Meteor Showers. Since this is probably once in a year opportunity, I would like to go prepared.

I was wondering if you guys can share some of your tips, suggestions, recommendations, and resources to learn more about viewing and photographing these meteor showers.

Thank you.

[DeadJohn]

You're not a total newbie. Use the same techniques you used for https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/299981-night-milky-wa...churchill.html and https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/299251-nature-my-firs...ar-trails.html.

Aim the camera at a section of sky, set manual exposure and focus, take a test shot to confirm. Then set the built-in intervalometer, external cable release, or just use a rubber band to hold the shutter button down for continuous photographs.

Watch the sky to confirm your camera is aimed in the general direction of meteor activity.

Bring spare batteries. Continuous long exposures eat batteries.

Meteor showers tend to peak after midnight, but there are many variables and randomness that can change a shower from year to year.

When you get back to a computer later, briefly review each photo to hopefully find a single image with multiple meteors. Also process all the photos into one startrail image, which you already know how to do. You can also combine the stars from a single image with meteors from multiple images.

[MJSfoto1956]

The "Perseids" will appear to originate from the area in the sky that includes the Perseus Constellation -- so be sure to look up where Perseus will be for your location on the dates of the shower. And frame your shot to include Perseus of course! Assuming you want star points and not star trails (so the meteor trails will "pop") set your camera for "normal" night sky settings. Put it on time lapse for an hour with enough time set in-between to capture the sky using your previous settings. Then sit back and let your camera run for an hour. You'll find that many of your shots won't have any Perseids, so your job in post is to combine the best images into one.

M

[uday029]

Thank you folks. I am also looking for suggestions regarding lens selection. I was planning to use either 14mm f2.8 or 10mm f2.8 but some online articles indicate that the chances of meteors showing up in an image is higher with slightly higher focal length, like a 24 mm 1,4 lens or 35mm 1.4. Is that true?

EDIT (adding more stuff):
Here is the link http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/nightscapes/#MeteorPhotography

It says
"Example using the a full-frame 35 mm digital camera and 35 mm f/1.4 lens: gives an angle of view of 54.4 x 37.9 degrees, or about 2062 square degrees. There are about 20626 square degrees in the visible sky, so the 35 mm focal length lens covers about 10% of the sky. If the meteor rate were 60 meteors per hour observable visually, we could expect about 6 meteors per hour to be recorded by a 35 mm lens on a full frame camera if the sensitivity were similar to our eyes. But a 35 mm f/1.4 lens has an aperture of 25 mm, compared to dark adapted eyes of about 7 mm. That means the 35 mm f/1.4 lens collects (25/7)2 = 12.7 times more light. Digital camera sensors are several times more sensitive than our eyes (let's say 5x), thus the digital camera would record about:

meteor record rate ~ visual rate * lens sky coverage fraction * (lens/eye area ratio) * sensitivity increase

For 60 meteors per hour and a 35 mm f/1.4 lens on a full frame camera:

meteor record rate ~ 60 * 0.1 * 12.7 * 5 = 381 / hour, about 3 per 30-second exposure!

For a 15 mm f/2.8 lens on a 1.6x crop body (73.2 x 52.8 degrees) ~ 19% of the sky, and an area ratio of 0.58, the camera + lens would record:
meteor record rate ~ 60 * .19 * .58 * 5 ~ 33 per hour ~ 1 per two-minute exposure."

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Last edited by uday029; 07-30-2015 at 02:27 PM.

[MJSfoto1956]

I'd recommend going wide -- the star trails can in fact be all over the sky.

M

[DeadJohn]

Don't pain yourself with all that math. Start with your 14mm f2.8 lens because it's forgiving; 30 second exposures will not cause star streaks, and you'll still see meteors if you aren't aimed at the best part of the sky(*).

After 2 hours of continuous photos or a dead battery, whichever comes first, experiment with another. A 28mm lens will need 15 second exposures to maintain pinpoint stars. Adjust ISO and aperture to keep a good sky exposure after the shutter change.

(*) This shower is called the Perseids because the meteor trails appear to trace back to the constellation Perseus. They will all be headed away from Perseus but can appear far away from the constellation itself.

[dakight]

It's also a full moon this weekend which will complicate things as the moon will be bright and flooding the sky with light all night long.

[csa]

The showers peak around Aug 11; a new moon on Aug 14 will give great viewing of the meteor showers.

[dakight]

The showers peak around Aug 11; a new moon on Aug 14 will give great viewing of the meteor showers.

Ah, that's different! I was misinformed.

[gifthorse]

Resources:
Astronomy Calendar of Celestial Events 2015 - Sea and Sky
The astro calender gives dates of astronomical events. Eclipses, full/new moon, meteor showers, etc. It also notes whether the Moon will be a problem with viewing meteor showers.

Heavens-Above
This shows passes of the ISS and other satellites such as Iridium flares.

Meteor Shower Calendar | American Meteor Society
The American Meteor Society website

Stellarium
Stellarium is a planetarium that is available as a cell phone app. Indispenable.

Take lots of batteries! Get comfortable. Take warm clothes. It can get cold on the Black Rock. Take a chair that reclines. Craning your neck to watch the sky gets tiresome quickly. If you're on the playa, there are no toilets.
Tie the tripod down. Take a jug of water and place it under the tripod and tie the tripod to the jug with heavy string. It will keep the camera steady if the breezes come up plus you have extra water. A flashlight with a red lens is helpful. Get one of the hands-free type. It's dusty up there. If you change lenses, get in the car with the windows rolled up. Turn off the car's overhead lights before it gets dark so that you don't shine on anyone else in the group when you open the door. Dim the camera monitor. It's very dark up there and the bright monitor will wreck your night vision.

The Perseids run from mid-July to late August with the peak on the night 12-13, so if the weather doesn't cooperate, you have several days on either side of the 12-13 especially since the Moon is approaching new. The radiant is in the constellation Perseus, where the meteors will appear from. Perseus will rise above the horizon at about 2200 Black Rock time but the best viewing will be after midnight. Perseus can be found to the northeast in the band of the Milky Way. Wider is better. Meteors will appear anywhere in the sky, so the wider the field of view, the more likely that you'll catch a meteor
High ISO. Your K3 will will easily handle 1600 ISO. Meteors usually flare for less than a second so the higher ISO may show meteors that were too dim for your eye to detect.
Turn off SR and NR. Since the camera is on a tripod, the shake reduction isn't need. Noise reduction (both long exposure and high ISO) will double the time between images. If you are doing 10 second exposures, the camera won't take another image for 20 seconds. (10 second exposure + 10 seconds NR). 30 second exposures would mean 1 minute between images. (30 second exposure + 30 second NR) That's half your time spent on noise reduction and maximum open shutter time increases the odds that a meteor will pass through the frame while the shutter is open. After it gets dark set the exposure to the longest you can get without star trailing. Try 1600 ISO and the aperture a stop or two down from wide open. Check the image and adjust as needed. When you're happy with the image, use the intervalometer to run the camera hands free. Set the exposure time and number of exposures and once you trip the shutter release, it's all hands free. You can do noise reduction in post processing. When you have the camera set to your satisfaction, put the lens cap on the lens and take a shot at that setting with the lens covered. You'll use that dark frame in post processing. You'll need a dark frame for each setting but that dark frame will work for all the images at that setting. Whenever you change the ISO or the exposure time, take another dark frame. You won't need a dark frame for aperture or focal length just for ISO and exposure length. Just do a web search for "Dark frame subtraction" to get instructions.
Aiming. The radiant is the point where the meteors appear to come from. In theory, that's where you'll see the most meteors but because they are coming directly towards you the trails will be short. About 30 degrees on either side of the radiant is supposed to be where the trails will be longest. You could also aim south to the galactic center and hope for some meteors to appear in the Milky Way. Since meteors are random and can appear anywhere in the sky at any time getting good images is a matter of luck.

[csa]

Gifthorse, excellent links and advice!

[jbinpg]

The Perseid shower started several days ago. Go to spaceweather.Com and scroll down to the bottom of the page where they show the number of fireballs detected over North America. If current trends continue, this may prove to be a great shower this year at its peak.

[gifthorse]

One more quick tip. (I've seen this problem occur many times when someone isn't used to using the intervalometer.) Exposure is the amount of time the shutter is open. Interval is the amount of time between the beginning of each exposure. If you set the exposure for fifteen second and the interval for thirty seconds, when the shutter is tripped, the shutter will open and fifteen seconds later the shutter will close for fifteen more seconds. (Totaling the thirty second interval you selected.) The shutter will then open for another fifteen seconds and the cycle repeats for the number of exposures you've selected. If you are doing 10 second exposures, the interval (The time between each exposure) has to be more than 10 seconds. If you are doing 30 second exposures the interval has to be 31 seconds or more. You can't do, for instance, a thirty second exposure every fifteen seconds. The interval MUST be be longer than the exposure! It doesn't have to be double the exposure time it just has to be more time. A locked up camera can usually be fixed by turning the camera off and then back on or turn the camera off, remove the battery for ten seconds or so and the reinsert the battery and turn the camera back on. Good luck! Please post your results.

[uday029]

Thank you. I am planning to put my camera in continuous shooting mode and lock in the remote trigger. That way it will just keep shooting pictures continuously until the battery dies or the card fills up.

One more quick tip. (I've seen this problem occur many times when someone isn't used to using the intervalometer.) Exposure is the amount of time the shutter is open. Interval is the amount of time between the beginning of each exposure. If you set the exposure for fifteen second and the interval for thirty seconds, when the shutter is tripped, the shutter will open and fifteen seconds later the shutter will close for fifteen more seconds. (Totaling the thirty second interval you selected.) The shutter will then open for another fifteen seconds and the cycle repeats for the number of exposures you've selected. If you are doing 10 second exposures, the interval (The time between each exposure) has to be more than 10 seconds. If you are doing 30 second exposures the interval has to be 31 seconds or more. You can't do, for instance, a thirty second exposure every fifteen seconds. The interval MUST be be longer than the exposure! It doesn't have to be double the exposure time it just has to be more time. A locked up camera can usually be fixed by turning the camera off and then back on or turn the camera off, remove the battery for ten seconds or so and the reinsert the battery and turn the camera back on. Good luck! Please post your results.

[DeadJohn]

Thank you. I am planning to put my camera in continuous shooting mode and lock in the remote trigger. That way it will just keep shooting pictures continuously until the battery dies or the card fills up.

That's a good way to do it because it gives the shortest possible gap between exposures, helpful if you decide to process images later to get startrails. The built-in intervalometer is usable but the interface isn't designed with long expsoure astrophotography in mind.