40 Orionid Meteors

Phil Hart · #1 26-10-2011, 12:32 AM

hi all

Here's a page with my image of 40 Orionid Meteors from Saturday night (Sunday morning) and some words:
http://philhart.com/content/40-orion...d-october-2011

I have to find a way to make the processing easier!

Good luck to everbody at IISAC and VicSouth this weekend. Sorry I can't be there!

cheers
Phil

luigi · #2 26-10-2011, 02:02 AM

Standing ovation!!!

The image is fantastic, and I really appreciate the description of your process.

I tried with 30 second exposures but only got 2 meteors:
http://www.luisargerich.com/nightsca...4e68#h3a8f4e68

I have the theory that the fainter meteors can be washed by sky glow in the long exposures so maybe your 4 second exposures does the trick. What do you think?

Luis

Octane (Humayun) · #3 26-10-2011, 02:20 AM

Phil,

That is a remarkable image. I am honestly floored.

Congralations, mate!

H

Astroman (Andrew Wall) · #4 26-10-2011, 06:14 AM

Excellent Work Phil, great result. With the one meteor I captured I did a similar thing to you in regards to masking and overlaying over another background image. I think this is the best method to use but as you state in your description it is tedious going through them all... I tried using a program called Starmax to auto detect the meteors but have been unsuccessful so far.

It shows a wide FOV fast lens and high ISO is what is needed for these to be captured on a DSLR. Thanks for taking the time for explaining how to capture them and process them out..

BTW did you have to do much curves adjustment on them to bring them out more?

dannat (Daniel) · #5 26-10-2011, 07:01 AM

Terrific work Phil, I am prob only 50km from there & we were quite cloudy

iceman (Mike) · #6 26-10-2011, 07:05 AM

Brilliant image, Phil!
Stunning.

Lester · #7 26-10-2011, 07:41 AM

Excellent meteor capture Phil. Would have to be the best I have seen. Thanks for the view. All the best.

gregbradley · #8 26-10-2011, 08:11 AM

A terrific image Phil. I like your planning and execution of a difficult imaging task. Tedious processing. I can't think of a way to speed it up unless scripting is able to be used. Perhaps another way would be to use the various combining methods in CCDstack. Setup right CCDstack combining methods will reject the meteors from the images.

Perhaps simply stack all the images and select out the meteors using Photoshop magic wand or a hide all mask or colour range selection seeing as they seem to be green.

The objects on the left are they trees? I'd be tempted to clone tool them out.

Greg.

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #9 26-10-2011, 08:54 AM

Amazing work Phil.

Phil Hart · #10 26-10-2011, 09:17 AM

thanks all!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astroman

Excellent Work Phil, great result. With the one meteor I captured I did a similar thing to you in regards to masking and overlaying over another background image. I think this is the best method to use but as you state in your description it is tedious going through them all... I tried using a program called Starmax to auto detect the meteors but have been unsuccessful so far.

It shows a wide FOV fast lens and high ISO is what is needed for these to be captured on a DSLR. Thanks for taking the time for explaining how to capture them and process them out..

BTW did you have to do much curves adjustment on them to bring them out more?

Yes.. it does take some curves adjustment (brightening) of the meteor sub-frames to get them to stand out. which answers greg's points as well.. the fainter parts of the meteor trail blend away into the background so selecting with magic wand/colour range etc doesn't work.

the very short exposure helps keep the background brightness down (more difficult with a bit of moonlight too) but after the curves adjustment it still makes the background brighter than the base image so just using lighten mode doesn't work.

i think the next step is to try video mode, as the meteors will be recorded just as bright but the background exposure will only effectively be 1/30 sec. not sure how i would process it though!

Phil

leon · #11 26-10-2011, 10:37 AM

That is just an amazing image, very nice indeed.

Leon

strongmanmike (Michael) · #12 26-10-2011, 11:51 AM

Like many here I am sure, I have had the "heard about an amazing meteor shower on the radio, have you seen it" line a few times here at work and I have patiently tried to explain how it works. It was nice to be able to send your photo around work and say "see? this is what I was talking about" :-)

Great project Phil.

Mike

Osirisra (Ken) · #13 26-10-2011, 03:37 PM

That is awesome, well done on an epic job. Makes me happy to see this as all I've seen of the Orionids this year is cloud and rain

midnight (Darrin) · #14 26-10-2011, 07:36 PM

Fantastic work Phil. A lot of effort has gone into that and it shows in the presentation.

Darrin..

astronobob (Bob) · #15 26-10-2011, 11:48 PM

That is a stunning result, Has a lot of Impact, Yep, Amazing work ! !

mishku · #16 27-10-2011, 12:02 AM

Mindblowingly good!!

gregbradley · #17 27-10-2011, 12:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by philiphart

thanks all!

Yes.. it does take some curves adjustment (brightening) of the meteor sub-frames to get them to stand out. which answers greg's points as well.. the fainter parts of the meteor trail blend away into the background so selecting with magic wand/colour range etc doesn't work.

the very short exposure helps keep the background brightness down (more difficult with a bit of moonlight too) but after the curves adjustment it still makes the background brighter than the base image so just using lighten mode doesn't work.

i think the next step is to try video mode, as the meteors will be recorded just as bright but the background exposure will only effectively be 1/30 sec. not sure how i would process it though!

Phil

What about simply stacking all the images and then using normal masking techniques to select out the meteors and enhance them with curves etc.

Non Orionid meteors could be clone tool or healing tooled out. Would that work?

That way you are simply doing a normal callibrate, normalise, data rejection for clean up then align and median stack routine then in PS to mask the meteors to boost them then healing tool unwanted ones out.

Greg.

Ross G · #18 27-10-2011, 08:53 PM

An amazing photo Phil.

Thanks.

Ross.

John Hothersall · #19 27-10-2011, 09:14 PM

Thats very impressive with great perspective.

John.

Phil Hart · #20 27-10-2011, 09:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregbradley

What about simply stacking all the images and then using normal masking techniques to select out the meteors and enhance them with curves etc.

Non Orionid meteors could be clone tool or healing tooled out. Would that work?

That way you are simply doing a normal callibrate, normalise, data rejection for clean up then align and median stack routine then in PS to mask the meteors to boost them then healing tool unwanted ones out.

Greg.

the masking process isn't any easier whether you do it on each meteor frame or on a combination. but aligning and stacking 5000 frames takes a long time and leaves you with a million satellite trails across the image. so it's quicker to reject most of the frames first.

i have however another idea, similar to something i used on some of my comet mcnaught images. if i take the average of a few sub-frames and subtract it from all those with meteors, that should leave just the meteor better separated from the background. i'm working on a repro..