Meteor showers

D.O.G.

Goblin 380 Supporter
Tomorrow night there suppose to be some serious meteor shower. I'm going to try recording it. I'm going to do a test run tonight with my drone and quad. batch_IMG_1883.JPG
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
The expected peak time for those showers are around 10pm Pacific time, 12am Central and 1am Eastern... or 5am UTC which may help others calculate their own time zone times.

The reason for the interest in this particular potential meteor shower is the particles that would make it up are from a comet that recently broke apart back in 1995. Because of it being recent, the particles haven't had as much time to disperse which could lead to a higher meteor shower count if we go through a denser portion of the debris stream. Most meteor showers we've seen in the past are made up of smaller dust to sand grain sized particles, because of the recent breakup of this one, they estimate their sizes to be larger pebble and nugget sized. Still, we've never encountered this stream before and really don't know much about it. In fact, the scientists don't know how much if any of the stream we are likely to enter, being sort of a threading the needle situation where you can't see where the needle is since the size of the particles aren't large enough to be detected.

The general location the meteors will radiate from near the constelation of Bootes, near the star Arcturus. You don't look at the radiant to view them, you look at locations tangent ( along the sides ) of that location. Think of a bath shower head as the radiant, water coming directly from the shower head are point sized and if you look tangent to it, along the sides, they make longer lines.

None of the experts can say if this will be a great meteor shower or not, they can only give their best estimate and they do not agree with each other despite being the experts. So don't expect one way or the other to avoid any disappointment... but there is a good chance it will be good from what I've read so keep your fingers crossed. If you can, make it an event with friends and family, then it won't matter if it's a show or not... you should still have a great time either way.

Getting a Pic... if you want to try...

Getting a good picture of the meteor shower ( if we have a good one ) if you don't have a camera mount that can track the stars and is fixed in place.... takes a little math and will depend on if you want to also have star trails or not. Assuming you do not want star trails since you will see those with the meteors you may capture... On a standard digital Canon crop sensor (1.6 crop )... a 50mm focal length lense can remain open up to around 6 seconds. A similar digital Nikon crop sensor ( 1.5 crop ) will allow you up to 7.5 second exposures at the most.

Here are the common crop factors for several types of cameras...

  • 1 X – Full frame cameras
  • 1.5 (1.6) X – Nikon (Canon) APS-C cameras
  • 2 X- Micro 4/3 cameras
  • 2.7 X and higher – Compact cameras with a one-inch type sensor (or smaller)
The math to help calculate the time is the following..

shutter speed ( in seconds ) = crop factor x focal length of lens


You will likely want to use a wider angle lens so you can capture a wider area of the sky, wider lens have the lower MM size. I'd guess ( since this is subjective and depends on what type of shot you want ) that a 14mm lens is the widest you would want to use. This would give you a slight fish eyed view but capture a big portion of the sky increasing the chances of capturing a shot of a meteor streaking through it. If you use the standard 35mm or 50mm lens, the shot will be of a narrower patch of sky but will appear more like what you see with your own eyes... ie will will appear flatter and not as fish eyed looking.

In all cases, you likely want to leave the iris of your lens as far open or a little bit more closed as you can get it so you will be able to gather as much light as possible. This will allow you to "shoot" with a lower ISO speed which I'll mention next. The size of the lens opening is related to what is called the lens' F-stop. The higher the F-stop number the sharper the details will be but it will be a darker image since less light is entering the lens and thus hitting your camera sensor.

The next factor to consider is how "fast" you set your camera's ISO speed. This is how sensitive it is to light. Higher ISO's will have brighter images but will have more "noise" than shooting with a lower ISO. So you will want as low of an ISO you can use to allow you to achieve the cleanest images with the least amount of "noise" in them. The higher the ISO is set, the more "noise" you'll see in the picture. If you are shooting within a town or city, you'll also be dealing with light pollution that can "fog" the picture. That is another reason to use a lower ISO setting in order to help limit the amount of light pollution you'll capture.

The main part of getting a good shot is getting a good focus. Most camera's are unable to focus on stars because of how the auto focus works ( they look for lines to get sharp, there are no lines in a starry sky). So you will want to set your focus to manual and then manually focus it at some stars in a few test shots until you get it as sharp as possible. I like to do this a night or two before when possible. If your camera allows you to magnify the image on your camera's viewer, do that. Then take a few test shots and bring them in to view them on your computer or a device with as large of a screen as you have. Adjust if needed in one direction, rinse and repeat comparing your previous pics to the latter ones. Note if the image is getting sharper or less sharp on each set of pics... and readjust until you get what you like. This is a little bit fiddly, but will give you a nice shot in the end and you won't have to rush to get it right on the night of the meteor shower. Speaking of the night of the shower, do double check your focus beforehand, I've accidentally bumped my lens in the past knocking it out of focus before without knowing it. Tweak the focus if needed well before the time of the shower so you aren't rushed at the last minute.

It's at this point after getting the best focus you can, that you can set how long your shot is going to be on your camera settings, the ISO and the F-stop. It's usually at this point I start deciding on what compromises I want to make between the ISO and F-stop settings. I typically set my F-stop a little higher than it's lowest number to get as sharp of an image as I can and the ISO slightly more than I care for to make up for the brightness I may have lost using a higher F-stop. It is a balancing act and there is no one right answer, you'll have to decide what it is that is more important to you.

There is one other choice you have on most of the better cameras out there... Do you want a pic that is already processed in the camera and saved as a JPG or PNG... or do you want a RAW image. The raw image will still need processing after you take your shots but if you use it, then you have the final say on how the image looks. If you let it process in camera, the maker of the camera will have already decided for you what the processing should be like... but a JPG image is compressed and will often loose image quality just to save a little bit of space ( file size ). I've seen few cameras that give you a PNG option, PNG files are not compressed so you don't loose quality but they would be process how the camera maker had decided. Because my own preferences are not always the same as the camera makers... I always choose and recommend shooting in RAW to give you all of the possible options. In either case processing is done, it's just a matter of if you want to have full control over it... or let the camera do it.

Final suggestion... get a wireless remote for your camera... or at least a cabled remote. When ( or if ) the meteor shower starts, select what you believe is the most active portion of the sky. Next just start taking pic after pic after pic. If you must, change memory cards in the middle. When you are done, you'll have a bunch of shots to go through but hopefully several will have a nice composition that you like. Process the ones you like most and share ... Do not expect the pics to be a good as what you will actually see with your eyes, there is no way to capture that awe that you'll feel actually watching it in action.


I've seen a lot of really pretty meteor pics and I do hope to get one at some point myself. Weather permitting, I'll at least be out there to enjoy whatever show we get. I'm uncertain if I'm going to take the time to setup a camera... but we'll see. :)
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
Oh... perhaps a related pic with stars and a comet is appropriate here....

The constellation Pleides, aka the Seven Sisters, is on the left with the Comet Lovejoy being on the right. Lovejoy is coming straight in at this point, so the tail doesn't show, it's the fuzzy greenish "dot" a little ways up from the "D" in my sig at the bottom.


Comet_Lovejoy_2015_On1_LAi_wm.jpg
 

D.O.G.

Goblin 380 Supporter
The expected peak time for those showers are around 10pm Pacific time, 12am Central and 1am Eastern... or 5am UTC which may help others calculate their own time zone times.

The reason for the interest in this particular potential meteor shower is the particles that would make it up are from a comet that recently broke apart back in 1995. Because of it being recent, the particles haven't had as much time to disperse which could lead to a higher meteor shower count if we go through a denser portion of the debris stream. Most meteor showers we've seen in the past are made up of smaller dust to sand grain sized particles, because of the recent breakup of this one, they estimate their sizes to be larger pebble and nugget sized. Still, we've never encountered this stream before and really don't know much about it. In fact, the scientists don't know how much if any of the stream we are likely to enter, being sort of a threading the needle situation where you can't see where the needle is since the size of the particles aren't large enough to be detected.

The general location the meteors will radiate from near the constelation of Bootes, near the star Arcturus. You don't look at the radiant to view them, you look at locations tangent ( along the sides ) of that location. Think of a bath shower head as the radiant, water coming directly from the shower head are point sized and if you look tangent to it, along the sides, they make longer lines.

None of the experts can say if this will be a great meteor shower or not, they can only give their best estimate and they do not agree with each other despite being the experts. So don't expect one way or the other to avoid any disappointment... but there is a good chance it will be good from what I've read so keep your fingers crossed. If you can, make it an event with friends and family, then it won't matter if it's a show or not... you should still have a great time either way.

Getting a Pic... if you want to try...

Getting a good picture of the meteor shower ( if we have a good one ) if you don't have a camera mount that can track the stars and is fixed in place.... takes a little math and will depend on if you want to also have star trails or not. Assuming you do not want star trails since you will see those with the meteors you may capture... On a standard digital Canon crop sensor (1.6 crop )... a 50mm focal length lense can remain open up to around 6 seconds. A similar digital Nikon crop sensor ( 1.5 crop ) will allow you up to 7.5 second exposures at the most.

Here are the common crop factors for several types of cameras...

  • 1 X – Full frame cameras
  • 1.5 (1.6) X – Nikon (Canon) APS-C cameras
  • 2 X- Micro 4/3 cameras
  • 2.7 X and higher – Compact cameras with a one-inch type sensor (or smaller)
The math to help calculate the time is the following..

shutter speed ( in seconds ) = crop factor x focal length of lens


You will likely want to use a wider angle lens so you can capture a wider area of the sky, wider lens have the lower MM size. I'd guess ( since this is subjective and depends on what type of shot you want ) that a 14mm lens is the widest you would want to use. This would give you a slight fish eyed view but capture a big portion of the sky increasing the chances of capturing a shot of a meteor streaking through it. If you use the standard 35mm or 50mm lens, the shot will be of a narrower patch of sky but will appear more like what you see with your own eyes... ie will will appear flatter and not as fish eyed looking.

In all cases, you likely want to leave the iris of your lens as far open or a little bit more closed as you can get it so you will be able to gather as much light as possible. This will allow you to "shoot" with a lower ISO speed which I'll mention next. The size of the lens opening is related to what is called the lens' F-stop. The higher the F-stop number the sharper the details will be but it will be a darker image since less light is entering the lens and thus hitting your camera sensor.

The next factor to consider is how "fast" you set your camera's ISO speed. This is how sensitive it is to light. Higher ISO's will have brighter images but will have more "noise" than shooting with a lower ISO. So you will want as low of an ISO you can use to allow you to achieve the cleanest images with the least amount of "noise" in them. The higher the ISO is set, the more "noise" you'll see in the picture. If you are shooting within a town or city, you'll also be dealing with light pollution that can "fog" the picture. That is another reason to use a lower ISO setting in order to help limit the amount of light pollution you'll capture.

The main part of getting a good shot is getting a good focus. Most camera's are unable to focus on stars because of how the auto focus works ( they look for lines to get sharp, there are no lines in a starry sky). So you will want to set your focus to manual and then manually focus it at some stars in a few test shots until you get it as sharp as possible. I like to do this a night or two before when possible. If your camera allows you to magnify the image on your camera's viewer, do that. Then take a few test shots and bring them in to view them on your computer or a device with as large of a screen as you have. Adjust if needed in one direction, rinse and repeat comparing your previous pics to the latter ones. Note if the image is getting sharper or less sharp on each set of pics... and readjust until you get what you like. This is a little bit fiddly, but will give you a nice shot in the end and you won't have to rush to get it right on the night of the meteor shower. Speaking of the night of the shower, do double check your focus beforehand, I've accidentally bumped my lens in the past knocking it out of focus before without knowing it. Tweak the focus if needed well before the time of the shower so you aren't rushed at the last minute.

It's at this point after getting the best focus you can, that you can set how long your shot is going to be on your camera settings, the ISO and the F-stop. It's usually at this point I start deciding on what compromises I want to make between the ISO and F-stop settings. I typically set my F-stop a little higher than it's lowest number to get as sharp of an image as I can and the ISO slightly more than I care for to make up for the brightness I may have lost using a higher F-stop. It is a balancing act and there is no one right answer, you'll have to decide what it is that is more important to you.

There is one other choice you have on most of the better cameras out there... Do you want a pic that is already processed in the camera and saved as a JPG or PNG... or do you want a RAW image. The raw image will still need processing after you take your shots but if you use it, then you have the final say on how the image looks. If you let it process in camera, the maker of the camera will have already decided for you what the processing should be like... but a JPG image is compressed and will often loose image quality just to save a little bit of space ( file size ). I've seen few cameras that give you a PNG option, PNG files are not compressed so you don't loose quality but they would be process how the camera maker had decided. Because my own preferences are not always the same as the camera makers... I always choose and recommend shooting in RAW to give you all of the possible options. In either case processing is done, it's just a matter of if you want to have full control over it... or let the camera do it.

Final suggestion... get a wireless remote for your camera... or at least a cabled remote. When ( or if ) the meteor shower starts, select what you believe is the most active portion of the sky. Next just start taking pic after pic after pic. If you must, change memory cards in the middle. When you are done, you'll have a bunch of shots to go through but hopefully several will have a nice composition that you like. Process the ones you like most and share ... Do not expect the pics to be a good as what you will actually see with your eyes, there is no way to capture that awe that you'll feel actually watching it in action.


I've seen a lot of really pretty meteor pics and I do hope to get one at some point myself. Weather permitting, I'll at least be out there to enjoy whatever show we get. I'm uncertain if I'm going to take the time to setup a camera... but we'll see. :)
Thanks for sharing Randy :).
 

D.O.G.

Goblin 380 Supporter
After all that drama, I got to see 4 meteors through cloudy skies and thunder flashes in the sky. The night before I did record a cool thunderstorm. I'm not going to post up because it's boring but neat at the same time.
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
The sky's here made it a almost no-go here as well. The sky was pretty hazy viewing, I couldn't say if it was from dust, humidity or thin clouds... but it was difficult to even find the Big Dipper. I did go out several times over about 30 minutes before giving up on trying to see anything. I also had a couple of live YouTube channels that I kept open for the times I moved back inside. I saw none on my limited viewing.
 
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