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Archive 2016 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia

  
 
dgdg
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


For the Perseid meteor shower we traveled to the western part of Virginia. No large mountains around here, so I usually try to find an interesting farm structure to ground it a little.

The meteor shower scene is a composite of course. Foreground was taken in the morning at low iso. The milky way was tracked with an Astrotrac for 4.5 minutes at iso 800 f/2.8. The meteors were 30 second images, f/2.8, iso 6400, untracked, each meteor overlaid taking care to align the images properly.
All images were taken on the same day and orientation using the same gear, focal length, and observation field.

Thanks for looking!

David

http://davidsphotography.zenfolio.com/img/s3/v43/p1923336061-5.jpg

http://davidsphotography.zenfolio.com/img/s2/v60/p2140477305-5.jpg

Edited on Aug 19, 2016 at 09:27 AM · View previous versions



Aug 14, 2016 at 11:47 PM
dsjtecserv
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Really nice, Dave. I like that you can see the color transition as the meteor burns out; not all Perseids images I've seen show that. From the color of the sky, it looks like you shot this while the moon was still up, fairly early. Is that correct?

Since you aligned the images, I assume that each meteor is shown in front of the stars that it was actually in front (rather than the position in the sky at the time). And since you were shooting on "other" side of the Milky Way from Perseus, I would expect that all of the meteors would be essentially parallel. Interesting that a few are not; perhaps the were non-Perseids?

Dave



Aug 15, 2016 at 07:52 AM
dgdg
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Thanks for your comments Dave.
Yes, the Moon set around 1 am and the milky way core was fading. I tried to balance the glow from the already set moon with capturing as much core as I could. Color balance was a little tricky.
Yes I did line everything up with reference stars as closely as possible in PS using the Difference mode. One meteor in the upper right is clearly not parallel, but I kept it in. On a dark night, nice random meteors are still present, just not as frequent.

Thanks again,
David



Aug 15, 2016 at 08:03 AM
dsjtecserv
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Yes, I think I have some non-Perseids in mind as well. I used Auto-align layers in PS, which not only rotated the images to align the stars, but warped each layer as well. In general this worked well to compensate for the extreme wide angle I was using, but some of the layers don't line up on the stars furthest from the middle.

Over what time frame did you capture the meteors?

Dave




Aug 15, 2016 at 08:13 AM
dgdg
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


I went out when the Moon was still up to give me time to polar align, then take the tracked background image after the moon had set for maybe 40-60 min. The core had already partly set which I expected.

I recall that I capturing 30sec images for about 2 hours or so. At 4:20 heavy fog rolled in. Everything was already dripping from the dew. By dawn, the visibility was maybe 40 yards (pea soup).

I saw many more meteors around the sky, but at 15mm one can only catch so many.
I used the two bright stars on either side of the Milky Way. I should know their names, but would have to look them up. Prior to processing the image, I did put all the images in LR and used the lens profile correction. Of course this doens't account for distortion caused by pointing upwards.
David



Aug 15, 2016 at 08:41 AM
MJKoski
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Interesting pair of images. They kind of complement each other due to similar way the rainbow hits the ground vs. MW and shooting stars.


Aug 15, 2016 at 08:57 AM
CDalessandro
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Like both images with #1 being my favorite. Beautifully done!


Aug 16, 2016 at 05:32 AM
Gary Clennan
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


I appreciate the effort it can take to produce such images - well done. Why *should* the meteors be parallel to one another? Most of the images I have seen have the meteors going in random directions... Also - how do you keep the dew off of your lens. This happened to me the other night and it was driving me crazy. Cleaning with microfiber didn't help at all.


Aug 16, 2016 at 09:12 AM
dgdg
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


I'll have to ask our astronomy club president and nasa engineer why they should be parallel.
If imaging the radiant, they all appear to spread out from one point.
If imaging opposite the radiant, they all will appear parallel.
In dark skies on any given night, one will see meteors not from a meteor shower. These are random meteors which can have any orientation.

Dew. Yeah Dew. Used to be my bane too. My gear was dripping wet by 4am and everything was already getting moist after midnight (bags, chair, etc). Only place I have not encountered dew was Arches NP.
I use a dew controller and strap from Thousand Oaks, a small jump start battery to power it, and a three port car cigarette splitter (with usb ports on the side) to power my tracker and camera.
http://www.thousandoaksoptical.com/dew.html
Put on the dew strap immediately after you tape down the focus ring. If you wait for dew to develop on your lens element, you can't recover from it.
I used to use hand warmer packets in a ski sock, but if it is cold out or very humid, you'll have to keep checking on them and refresh. The warmer packs work in a pinch but require too much maintenance.

David



Aug 16, 2016 at 11:22 AM
JimFox
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Hey David,

First off, I really like #2. That bit of a rainbow and the golden light on the ground is really nice.

On #1, a couple of thoughts:

1st, the ground is lit a bit, but doesn't add a ton of interest to the shot. Perhaps if it had been lit more on the ground, even though that wouldn't have been realistic, it would have added that needed foreground element?

2nd, the Milky Way looks very natural. Perhaps it could be a hair brighter? But it has a very natural look to it.

3rd, in reference to some comments about the meteors being parallel. I don't think that is the case with Perseids. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believed that the meteors originate from a fixed spot in the sky, radiating out from that spot. So that means that meteors that are close together will appear to be parallel, but truly are not. Now by shooting tighter like you did they should all have a downward angle. When I shot it last year in Yosemite (which I probably should finally post) I shot WA, and you can see the meteors radiate out from that one spot.

Interesting comments about the dew. It's definitely not an issue I have had to deal with really out here on the west coast or in the Southwest.

Jim



Aug 17, 2016 at 05:49 PM
dgdg
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Thank you Jim.

It's a hard balance to decide how much pop vs. natural appearance one should give a night sky image like this. I've been trending towards softer realistic scenes lately.

Yeah, in Virginia I seem stuck with farms and old barns for foregrounds.
Dew is really bad here on the east coast. I was dewed out at Glacier NP several years ago which started my 'No Dew on Me' campaign.

Using your great suggestions, I think I do like the edit better. I also shifted the color balance a little. The unevenness in color across the sky is due to the recently set moon.

It does have a more 'unnatural' contrast to it, but I think it is stronger without being over the top.

Thank you,
David

p.s.
The whole meteor angle thing made me curious.
Interesting write up on why meteors from the radiant appear to fan out, but when viewed in the opposite direction they appear parallel. I assume 180 degrees from the radiant they appear parallel since they are near to us as they burn up in the atmosphere, unable to cause an infinity point convergence perspective.
http://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-basics/
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/M/Meteor+Shower



Aug 17, 2016 at 07:06 PM
Leo S
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Nice composite David. I personally think it would be more striking without the sporadic.

dgdg wrote:
I assume 180 degrees from the radiant they appear parallel since they are near to us as they burn up in the atmosphere, unable to cause an infinity point convergence perspective.



Actually, the paths of meteors of the same shower, in this case Perseids, are always more or less parallel to each other. This property is the reason it's possible to classify any meteor as belonging to the Perseid meteor shower, and the reason why meteors appear to us to radiate away from the radiant.

Imagine standing in the middle of railway tracks which go off into the distance, and are perfectly straight for as far as you can see. If you look towards the distant horizon, where the tracks appear to converge to a point, that point is analogous to the meteor shower radiant, and the tracks themselves represent the paths (or orbits) of meteors. A meteor seen in the radiant would appear like a stationary star (or point of light - the important thing is that it's not a streak from your perspective) that suddenly appears, gets bright, and then dims, because it's heading directly towards you, just like a train coming down the track.

Meteors which start away from the radiant are no longer heading towards you, and perspective gives you a side on view of them, so if you go back to imagining yourself on the railway tracks, and if you turn through 90 degrees, you are now seeing the track from the side, which is like seeing a meteor at 90 degrees away from the radiant in the sky.

Now turn through another 90 degrees so that you are facing in the exact opposite direction that you started, and you are looking along a pair of tracks that converge on the horizon once again. Now you are looking at the anti-radiant, and meteors, following the path of the tracks actually seem to converge!

So all meteors seen @ 90 degrees from the radiant are seen side on, and guess what, they appear (and are!) parallel to each other. Perspective/foreshortening makes meteors seen anywhere else but 90 degrees from the radiant appear to either diverge or converge to a lesser or greater degree the further they are from 90 degrees.

It's actually all very simple if you think about it!



Aug 17, 2016 at 11:09 PM
JimFox
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Hey David,

I like the edit of #1. The ground is just a little bit brighter, but it really helps to anchor the shot I think.

And to Leo, I think you blew my mind just a little bit...

Jim



Aug 18, 2016 at 12:17 AM
kmunroe
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


beauties David.. especially #1


Aug 18, 2016 at 02:53 AM
Tuan Le
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Nicely done on the meteor shower image David. Adding some subtle interest to the ground layer elevates the image.


Aug 18, 2016 at 09:18 PM
dsjtecserv
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Perseids in the Highlands of Virginia


Pursuant to Leo's description, see My shot of the Perseids. This was taken toward the radiant, toward the constellation Perseus, and you can see that they emanate from a central point (with a few exceptions, which are probably non-Persied meteors; those that happen all the time). Dave's were taken away from the radiant, and so they are more or less parallel.

Dave



Aug 18, 2016 at 11:35 PM





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