2011 Perseid Meteor Shower
View allAll Photos Tagged PerseidMeteorShower
We had a massive bank of clouds move in Saturday cutting our Perseid viewing short. Nonetheless, I managed to catch a few meteors before it clouded over and we still had a blast!
Image notes: this is a composite image combining all the meteors I recorded by the time viewing was no longer possible. I used my new Nitecore EA4W flashlight with a diffuser on to subtly light paint a bit of the foreground to add interest. The orange glow is from Laramie, WY light pollution. Given the paucity of meteors it made me feel lucky I got to see so many the week prior in the dark skies of Nevada's Great Basin country. And I'm pretty sure the base frame I used has a satellite here as well.
The Maroon Bells are quite possibly the most photogenic mountains in Colorado. They are photographed by thousands of people per year, especially during the autumn season from Maroon Lake. In this somewhat rarer view of the iconic peaks, I've taken the liberty of photographing both the Maroon Bells, the Perseid Meteor Shower, and the Milky Way, all reflected beautifully in Crater Lake. This nightscape of two of my favorite 14ers near Aspen, Colorado is sure to remind of of the wonder and awesome beauty that this wilderness area has to offer.
I was clouded out for this year's shower, but here's a successful shot from last year...
From Blue Ridge Parkway, VA. I sat as still as I could manage for about an hour until a bright one appeared in the shot.
On the second to last night before leaving the state of Washington, I looked up at the sky and saw no clouds. I decided to take a chance and drive up to Rainier to see if I could catch the Milky Way. I was not disappointed.
Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you the 2012 Perseid Meteor Shower over Mount Hood, Oregon.
This is 22 photos stacked representing about four hours.
A fireball Perseid meteor splits the sky above the Red Desert's Adobe Town Rim in southern Wyoming.
Image Notes: Single exposure for sky and two light-painted exposures for the foreground.
To celebrate the Perseid Meteor Shower in full show from August 17-24th I thought I would dig up and have another crack at a nightscape from Angels Beach I took years ago.
For this version I tried something a little different adding a bit of drama to the star-trails so they don't just look like bleak lines across the sky.
Anyway I hope you enjoy the final product as much as I do, let me know what you think! Its nice to sometimes feel like your actually progressing along the post processing learning curve!
Taken in NSW, Australia.
Thanks for looking!
D
Though it had already peaked, we went back to Joshua Tree National Park again and hit the motherload. First time ever to catch one this colorful.
A few days ago my 6-year-old son asked me what it was like to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower, since he is learning about it at camp. I told him it is one of the most amazing things you can ever see and that I would make him a picture to try to show him what it is really like. I took these photos during last year's meteor shower in the Ice Lake Basin of Colorado near Silverton and finally got around to compositing them together to highlight the shower. I was trying to get the feeling of lying on your back and looking into the heavens while watching the Perseids. I know this year's show won't be as grand due to the lunar cycle, but I always get excited about the Perseids as it always connects be back to my youth when we used to go camping and watch the light show above. This is a 360x180 panorama stitched in Autopano Giga. I re-aligned the meteors to the Perseid radiant in Photoshop CS5.
Three Perseid meteors and a tiny 4th just to the right of center, appear during this 30 sec. exposure at Craters of the Moon National Monument west of Arco, Idaho.
Addendum; Mark Riddick (see below) suggests that these are satellite trails rather than Perseid meteors and I think he is probably correct. Thanks, Mark!
Camera Nikon D3S
Exposure 30
Aperture f/2.8
Focal Length 14 mm
ISO Speed 6400
Exposure Bias 0 EV
View the entire Night Sky Set
View the entire Low Light Photography Set
View the Craters of the Moon Set
View my - Most Interesting according to Flickr
Searching for Perseid Meteor shower last night was a lot of fun with John, Gordon and Cynthia. Conditions were clear this year, so we went to the usual spot to shoot.
Had to do the "wilson" shot, of getting a selfie with the Milky Way. Only took 2 shots with this one and I was centered just under the arch.
In this shot, there was no meteors, but i'll share more with them later. Tonight the Perseid peak, so best to look northeast
Probably one of my favorite shots from my Modern-Sky series. This shot is done all in camera by zooming your lens in or out. For a 30 second shot, I left it still for a about 5 seconds to get the foreground in focus. I was surprised by the result I got. Shot was then process using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 and Nik Software's Color Efex Pro 2.
To learn more and see the full series: tobyharriman.com/new-photo-series-modern-sky/
Website | facebook | Google+ | Tumblr | Twitter | Flickr | 500px | Stipple | Vimeo | Behance
I went out both Friday and Saturday night this past weekend for an early preview of the Perseid Meteor Shower. This image highlights many of the meteors I saw Saturday night on a very early morning sky.
This weekend will be the peak of the shower. NASA has put together a page featuring some of my photos to help plan your Perseid viewing experience. You can see it here: www.nasa.gov/connect/chat/perseids_2011.html
Edit to add that the BBC has now blogged this new 2011 Perseid image here: www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/23degrees/2011/08/even_with_the_full_...
Shot Notes: To obtain this image I had it consecutive shoot 444 images, starting at around 1:30 am going until around 4:45 am. The main frame used for this image was taken near the end when morning twilight was getting well underway. A total of 30 frames or so had meteor captures and a good handful of those are here, see how many meteors you can spot!
Alright... here is the adjusted version of the last Perseid Meteor shot that received 17,500 views.
Explanation follows.
The last meteor shot that I posted was just all of the meteors merged down without consideration to the fact that the Earth is rotating which moves the meteor's point of origin as time goes by. The result is a group of meteors that look as if they are coming down in a totally random pattern, when in fact the Perseid's originate near the part of the sky that the constellation Persius is located, thus their name.
And so, after much labor and calculation I have remade this shot and in doing so have taken into consideration the rotation of the Earth. This gives it a much more dramatic affect, especially with the stationary stars in the background.
The Process:
Please read if you are curious about how this image was made.
First, this shot was made by setting up my camera on a tripod and programming my cable release to take 360 - 30 second exposures, which is 3 hours of time lapse. After which I downloaded all of the photos and separated each shot that had a meteor. I eliminated airplane trails and iridium flares. I then combined them all into layers over another 30 second exposure of Mount Hood, the lake and the sky. I then went about the painstaking task of masking out each meteor so the background would show through the layer.
Once I have separated each meteor I returned to the beginning and located the axis of rotation at the North Star and then went about rotating each layer using Andromeda (?) as a reference point of location.
After I had each meteor coming from the proper point of origin I merged them into one transparent layer and brightened them up and merged that layer down onto the bottom layer.
And this is the result. I've been working on this off and on for a week now trying to get it right.
For the Perseid Meteor shower, we took the family and drove out to Mirror Lake in the High Uintas of Northern Utah to enjoy the night sky. It was a perfect night, being extremely dark and cloudless.
In the middle of this photo you can see the whitish figure of the Milky Way. It was very close to the North Star at this hour, and the kids had commented that they had never seen the stars so bright as we saw them this night. Totally a fun family activity and a great opportunity for me to practice my night shooting.
Perseid Meteor Shower at Trillium Lake Friday morning, August 13, 2010.
I took 360, 30 second exposures to get this one shot. This is an aggregate of the meteors that fell in three hours last night.
Exposure - 30 seconds x 360 exposures
Aperture - f/2.8
Focal Length - 11 mm
ISO Speed - 2000
Basically - This shot was created by taking 360 exposures and then taking the shots that had meteor's in them out and layering them over each other and masking and merging them into the lower layer. I did each layer one at a time.
This shot did not take into consideration the rotation of Earth during the three hours that I was shooting, thus the lack of a common point of origin. I have since compensated using a time/rotation adjustment and recompiled the layers into this image HERE.
Milky-way seen through Mobius Arch, Alabama Hills.
Me and my old friend Mac headed out to Mobius Arch over the weekend in search of a dark place to catch the Perseid Meteor Shower. Here is what we took while we were shooting the meteor shower in the opposite direction!
Camera - Nikon D800
Lens - Tokina 16-28mm f2.8
I knew it was foolish to go for catching a Perseid's meteor pointing the opposite direction of where they tend to emanate from, but I really wanted one above these gorgeous mountains. Luck prevailed! Overall, catching this year's installment of the Perseid Meteor Shower Peak from the Ross Lake Overlook at N. Cascades National Park was truly a magical experience I will remember for the rest of my life.
SkyFall
-
No chance of #perseids tonight! Its raining. So here is a shot of the Milky Way from Fridays nights adventure, running around in the dark on top of the Long Mynd in Shropshire. #PerseidMeteorShower
The Perseid Meteor Shower has arrived! Here we see some early Perseids and probably some other meteors not related to the shower looking towards the shower radiant in the east. You can also very clearly see the Andromeda Galaxy and the Seven Sisters/Pleiades as well thanks to the very low light pollution in this portion of Nevada. This was taken in Humboldt National Forest outside of Ely on our way back from a family reunion.
The shower will peak on the nights of August 11-12 and/or August 12-13. Try the nights before and after that as well, as you can see from above you can see Perseid Meteors right now! My friend and fellow flickrite David Kingham has written an excellent guide on preparing to photograph the meteors, see here:
www.davidkinghamphotography.com/blog/2013/7/photograph-th...
Meteor shower in Joshua Tree National Park. Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8.
Shot from the top of Brasstown Bald - (Blairsville, Georgia) during the Perseid meteor shower. The tower at the bottom is the observation tower on top of the mountain. PRESS "L" TO VIEW LARGE.
Just looking back at this photograph taken takes me immediately back to the great evening there in dark White Point, Nova Scotia where I was taking star trails with one camera (and the 17mm lens) and taking meteor captures with the 14mm lens on this camera.
Amazing how much light the f/1.8 lens can pick up in that darkness, with the Milky Way and stars in the sky creating enough light for the camera to get some pretty impressive detail on the small forest area I was in at White Point. The red light was from the other camera that was taking the star trail exposure (30 minutes I was shooting for). Amazing how much light that small red light on the camera gives off in the darkness ... enough that you can see the trail I was on among the trees, as well as my camera bag that had water and bug spray, extra batteries, etc.
Was also lucky to get a nice meteor there in the sky not far from Andromeda Galaxy.
Looking back at these night shots, it is also very apparent that they sky went from blues to eventually some greens in the night. The White Balance here is at 4800K.
Was a ton of fun that night. By this time Mrs. Krach had seen enough meteors and she had hiked back to our bed & breakfast.
After the moon set the Milky-Way shown brightly; you could even see some of the brigher stars reflected in the water. Oddly it was not the longer star trail exposures with the most meteors, but some of the 30sec star field exposures. But most of them were only visible when viewing the original image at 100% and then just barely. This shot has two meteors bright enough to withstand the downsizing and the resampling for posting here.
In addition to the Milky-way and meteors you can also see: the Pleiades, Hyades, Andromeda Galaxy, and Double Cluster (see notes).
30sec, f2.8, ISO4500 10.5mm full frame fisheye. Step out under the night sky view large on black. Click here to see an improved Aug 2016 version of this image. N06586
Last night I went out to Snowy Range in Wyoming in search of dark skies for the Perseid meteor shower. I wanted something special for the foreground and I knew the Snowies faced in the perfect direction to get this shot. I started shooting at 10pm and didn't stop until 5 am, I had to change my battery every 2 hours which made for a long night. The moon rose around 1am to light up the mountain range.
This is a composite of 23 images, 22 for the meteors/stars and 1 taken at sunrise for the foreground which was lightly blended in. I also corrected the orientation of the meteors to account for the rotation of the earth (this took forever!)
I had a great night which was made even better because I spent it with my newly adopted dog Emmie, she was a trooper!
Free wallpaper downloads on my website! www.davidkinghamphotography.com/night/h626c32b#h626c32b
Free smartphone wallpaper www.davidkinghamphotography.com/blog/2013/3/free-smartpho...
I also offer Night Photography Workshops www.davidkinghamphotography.com/workshops
I went to the Ice Lake Basin near Silverton, Colorado to capture the Perseids this year. We had some good luck and caught some dark skies on the night the shower peaked. I was able to get 19 meteors in this 3-hour composite.
We always enjoy Perseid Meteor Shower every year. This year is one of the best we've seen. The temperature in Joshua Tree National Park was so comfortable at 72' F.
The Perseid Meteor Shower as seen from the University of Colorado's Mountain Research Station. This photo is a composite of 12 images (culled from 480) shot over a 4 hour period on the morning of August 12th. The Milky Way had light clouds in it that caught the lights of the nearby Boulder/ Denver Megalopolis and turned it orange. Only marginally adjusted to account for the Earth's rotation. Note that the meteor trails mostly point to the constellation Perseus.... thus the Perseid meteor shower.
Great tutorial on how to catch and display meteor showers: www.davidkinghamphotography.com/blog/2013/7/photograph-th...
I thought I'd be smart with my first try at catching an actual Perseid meteor shower and shoot it just like I do my star trails. So I used the 30 second exposure at ISO 400 with an aperture of 4.0.
264 shots later, I found that those settings were not adequate (sensitive) enough to capture the bulk of the meteors. Only one single and bright meteor shows up in this combined final photo with all 264 shots, using startrails software. That can be seen in the upper left if you look closely. The total time for exposure of this shot was 2 hours 14 minutes.
Towards the end, the moon began encroaching on the photo, which is the bright area on the right. In retrospect, I should have used an ISO of 800 and a f2.8 lens but I have it so ingrained in my head never to use high ISOs......... so I learn a lesson.
This is probably the best Perseid meteor I captured during the recent shower. The photo was taken from the 6,525 foot summit of Lookout Mountain in the Mount Hood Wilderness here in Oregon. I wanted to make an interesting scene on the off chance that a meteor blazed through, and it paid off.
The tripod and camera on the ridge belong to the amazing night photographer Ben Coffman, while Gary Meyers was lurking just out of this scene with Jay Howard. It was a long night of shooting, and the results were actually pretty darn good. I can't wait to share a few more, but I have to find the time to go through and process them properly. I know Ben, Gary and Jay all got some great shots, as well, so there's plenty to look forward to.
In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoys the photo, it's not my favorite from this evening by any stretch, but it's got the best meteor so it's going up first.
Thanks for viewing!
For the Perseids I headed out to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of California. The oldest trees in the world are quite impressive.
This is a composite shot of 73 meteors I found in a time-laspe I was shooting. I aligned the meteors as they were captured according to where they were against the stars.
Huge thanks to Wayne Barsky (flickr.com/lightismight) who happened to be shooting nearby and let me borrow an extra intervalometer after both my time-lapse dolly and intervalometer had broken. Without that, this shot would not have been possible!
My Facebook Page: on.fb.me/KennethDarkSkyChaser
Specs:
Canon 6D 20s 10000ISO
Rokinon 14mm 2.8 @2.8
Time-Lapse of 900+ images
11:20PM-4:30AM
73 images had meteors.
Many of us live in sprawling urban areas and very rarely get the opportunity to see the stars of the night sky. I'm one of those people, and I failed miserably last month trying to get a long exposure of the Milky Way from a few miles outside of town.
Well, here's "take two". I got WAY out of town! This photo highlights the Milky Way as seen at high altitude on a moonless night in August 2013. This was just prior to the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The glow on the horizon is from urban areas more than 100 miles distant. Just above the horizon are faint, near-horizontal light trails from passenger jets. Just to the right of the Milky Way is a near vertical light trail from a meteor entering Earth's atmosphere. Just below and left of the meteor trail is the "Dark Horse Nebula". It is, of course, in the shape of a horse (head toward top, legs pointing toward the right). The light trails below the horizon are from cars traveling a roadway in the distance. Please stay tuned for more shots and a special time-lapse video that I will be putting together this week.
Due to various limitations, I'm only able to travel about 3 times per year. This was one of my trips, and I was very happy to be in the company of my friend, Chris. It was several years ago that I posted a story about a mountain lion that was stalking the two of us on a night-sky viewing trip. Well, "déjà vu all over again"! On our way back from this trip, I saw not one, but TWO mountain lions crossing the road in separate locations! The two astronomy trips are the only times I've ever seen the elusive cougar.
Perseid Meteor with the Milky Way (the Galaxy we belong to) in the Background
Location: Indian Cove, Joshua Tree National Park
2012.08.12
Here is my first try at time lapse, not really a success as i have got some humidity condensation on my lens quite rapidly, but i've been lucky enough to get few meteor.
84 shots of 20 sec @ f/2.8 Iso 6400
Canon 5D markII
Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L usm
Yongnuo time lapse remote
Windows movie maker
here the lucky meteor:
www.flickr.com/photos/wilfried-b/4895226535/in/photostream/
August 15, 2010 Explore #5
Joshua Tree National Park
2012.08.11
Interesting info about Perseids on Wiki.
Interesting info about Pleiades (Seven Sisters) in folklore and literature on Wiki.
This was taken just outside Telford in Sutton Maddock. I had to head west to escape the light polution of the midlands that still lit up the clouds at midnight!
This website helps you photo things in space incl space stations and shuttles!....
I took this shot of the Milky Way off the top of Lookout Mountain in the Mount Hood Wilderness, Oregon. It was the middle of this year's Perseid meteor shower and I was getting a little bored with simply shooting the same spot in the sky over and over in hopes of capturing meteors. Lookout Mountain has a ton of beautiful Whitebark pine trees, and this specimen made a great foreground for a south-facing image. This is one of the resulting photos, and I hope you enjoy it!
NEWS ARTICLE:
www.caller2.com/2000/august/14/today/texas_me/1885.html
Worked with scanning technician Mr. Lee Lawrence of P&Q Photo Hollywood California trying to figure out the color embedded in the 35mm Fuji Superia ISO 800 negative, and our research proved miraculously rewarding!! low latitude rare aurora during solar maximum aug 12, 2000 from a coronal mass ejection on approx Aug 9/10. Negative scanned by Graytone.com in 2002 with Isomet 405HR drum scanner with high dynamic range sensitivity. Atomic nitrogen glowing blue at 1000km as confirmed by physicist Neil Davis. Pink oxygen emissions and Perseid Meteor crashing thru due to simultaneous meteor shower that night at 4am 12 Aug 2000. Scanned by P & Q Photo, 6660 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, California.
ROCKET TRAIL PHOTO OF GLOWING COLORS IN THE STRATOSPHERE by Flickr member Angel Villanueva
Here's another take of the Perseids Meteor Shower. This one is from the very early morning hours, which explains the blue color in the sky.
I didn't include this meteor in the composite I posted earlier as it wouldn't blend very well without a lot of alteration and I really liked how the single meteor plays here. You will also notice that both Mars and the Milky Way had moved well out of the frame at this point.
I hope you all got to see some meteors this year, it was a fabulous show!