6 (was 5!) Geminids over Perth Observatory

[rogerg]

Hi all,

This is a work in progress. I'm open to suggestions for improvements.

There's many technical issues I've been working to resolve. Light pollution, varying amounts of lens dewing (changes between exposures), and trickyness of aligning images. Let alone the usual blending & stacking. Getting a flat field would be nice, but is hampered by the varying dew. Also, improving SNR will be worked on.

larger 1200px version at my site:
http://rogergroom.com/astro-photography/2012-geminids-meteor-shower/

Details..

Combination of 5 exposures from Friday night between 1am and 4am.

Each exposure is 60 seconds @ 3200ISO @ f/4.
Canon 8-15mm F/4L fisheye @ 10mm

Also contains Pliades, Jupiter, Orion and Sirius amongst other things.

Regards,
Roger.

[rogerg]

New result. I'm significantly happier with this one. And, I found an extra meteor! Just above the main (distant) dome).

I really like the result now.

New attached.

Photo at website has been updated, click it to view the 1200 pixel version:
http://rogergroom.com/astro-photography/2012-geminids-meteor-shower/

[LewisM]

Good work!

I saw one SUPERB fireball last night, and a couple smaller ones a little later. Even one of the neighbours saw the fireball and got all excited :)

[CapturingTheNight]

An awesome image Roger. :thumbsup: I hope you don't mind a slight critique: the bright stars Sirius and Procyon(?), and to a much lesser extent Betelgeuse and Rigel, look a fraction too large IMHO (I think Jupiter is perfect though) but I LOVE the colour of them, and understand that you might not have had much control over the bloating due to that dew you mentioned. Great work.

[rogerg]

Excellent :) there were a few we visually saw which didn't show up in the photo's and they were pretty bright, so there must have been a few around...



Thanks ... yes, no choice in the star bloating regard, dew caused that :) Also caused some odder looking diffusing around the slightly fainter stars of Orion etc which I'd normally say is histogram clipping error :)

[iceman]

Beautiful work Roger!

[Deeno]

Great Stuff!

[niko]

that's a ripper - well done

I had 2 abortive trips to dark skies on the weekend only to be clouded out both times

[colinmlegg]

Nice one Roger.

[rogerg]

Thanks :)

:( meteor howers have a habbit of attracting cloud, lightning and rain I find. I was surprised to get much this time. I haven't had much luck in the past.

Thanks :)

Thanks :)

[Ross G]

Beautiful captures Roger.

Ross.

[fittolive]

Very nice work. I am still just learning this sort of stuff but managed to capture quite a few meteors over the couple of hours i was down at Lake Clifton on Friday night. Now i just need to figure out how to stack the images to show all the meteor trails without the stars trailing and i might have a pretty decent image.

[rogerg]

Thanks :)



It will be more tricky if you haven't had the camera tracking the stars for the exposures, but not impossible. You'll probably find you can align on the centre of the radiant OK (somewhere in Gemini) but will find stars away from there will become increasingly distorted, I think, because of various effects. I have a series of exposures which were when the camera was panning horizontally across the horizon but I haven't tried stacking them with the stars aligned yet, might just keep them for a timelapse :)

[naskies]

Very nice, Roger! Would've made a beautiful night scape even without the Geminids (though they're a great bonus). Orion certainly turned out well!

[rogerg]

Thank you , I'm happy people are enjoying it :)