Robert Watcher
Well-known member
I heard that Dec 13/14 was going to be the peak of the Geminid Meteor Shower —- headed out at 3:30am to see what I could see.
My camera with wide angle lens was pointed in the vicinity of the Gemini Constellation - the meteorites apparently eminate from an area near the two stars that make up the heads of the twins - although the streaks can be seen in any part of the sky.
It was great watching the bright streaks flash across the sky on a regular basis. Less successful was the ability to capture pics with my camera. But I managed a few over the couple of hours I stayed out in my secluded back road location.
Much of the clarity was obscured somewhat by passing light cloud cover, in these pictures (the blotchiness). 10 second exposures, kept the stars reasonably round (without using a star tracker) while keeping the shutter open in hopes of catching a meteorite during that time, in the field of view that I was aiming at. I used the camera‘s Time Lapse feature to keep continuously shooting with short 1 second breaks - for the entire time. Analyzing the 390 frames when I got home resulted in around 15 that had meteor streaks in them (the ones I havent included here were faint or short).
The picture below, is more of an overview using the full image taken with a 22mm equivalent wide angle lens.
The stars of the Geminid Constellation are on the upper left side of the picture. It was easy to first locate the Orion Constellation in the SW sky, then identify the less bright stars of Gemini above it. The Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster is on the bottom left side.
My camera with wide angle lens was pointed in the vicinity of the Gemini Constellation - the meteorites apparently eminate from an area near the two stars that make up the heads of the twins - although the streaks can be seen in any part of the sky.
It was great watching the bright streaks flash across the sky on a regular basis. Less successful was the ability to capture pics with my camera. But I managed a few over the couple of hours I stayed out in my secluded back road location.
Much of the clarity was obscured somewhat by passing light cloud cover, in these pictures (the blotchiness). 10 second exposures, kept the stars reasonably round (without using a star tracker) while keeping the shutter open in hopes of catching a meteorite during that time, in the field of view that I was aiming at. I used the camera‘s Time Lapse feature to keep continuously shooting with short 1 second breaks - for the entire time. Analyzing the 390 frames when I got home resulted in around 15 that had meteor streaks in them (the ones I havent included here were faint or short).
The picture below, is more of an overview using the full image taken with a 22mm equivalent wide angle lens.
The stars of the Geminid Constellation are on the upper left side of the picture. It was easy to first locate the Orion Constellation in the SW sky, then identify the less bright stars of Gemini above it. The Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster is on the bottom left side.
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