Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Trying to Catch the Perseids

Stars - and a red glow


I got up before 3:00 AM to try to catch a few photographs of the Perseid meteor shower. While I did see two meteors streak across the sky, my camera was not so lucky. It managed to get a flare of one as it streaked through the camera’s field of view just a second before the shutter closed. The only evidence are two tiny green streaky blobs in one of the pictures.

I did manage to snap a few pictures with some stars and Jupiter, along with a few high clouds that happened to drift into the photos. One of the photos picked up a reddish glow in the area when the sun rises. Since the photo was taken at 3:15 AM, it is likely some advance light from the sun was reflecting on the high clouds as they moved in. (There are actually quite a few stars in these photos but they are hard to see in these smaller pictures.)


The meteor trail are the 2 small dots in the upper right of the photograph, just to the left of the shadow of the tree. It looked much better in person, trust me.


The picture below was taken at 3:05 AM, some stars are visible, but the length of exposure makes the photograph look like it is past dawn.


That small bright dot just left of center is Jupiter, which is still hanging around in the southern sky. This photo was taken at 2:55 AM.



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