Star Spotting
My first attempt at taking a long exposure photograph of the stars. I was trying to see the Perseid meteorites and took a few pics while I was waiting. A lot of light pollution in this area.
Normally, whenever they announce on the news that there will be a meteor shower that evening, you can guarantee its going to be a cloudy night and nothing can be seen. Last night was fantastic in that it was a lovely clear sky with only a few clouds.
From my chair in the garden I saw quite a few shooting stars. It was pretty cool. I've never really seen one that I definitely knew was a meteorite, sometimes I've caught glimpses of feint ones. The ones last night were very bright.
Of course, all this shooting star spotting has got me in the mood for the new Neil Gaiman movie Stardust ;)
posted by Joanna @ 8/13/2007 11:20:00 AM
8 Comments:
At August 13, 2007 4:34 PM,
Jessica Sweet TV said…
I wanted to see the too, but here it was totally covered by clouds :(
Now lets hope its a clear sky for the coming moon eclipse.
At August 14, 2007 8:10 AM,
Emilygrae said…
Very nice pic! That's Orion, right? ;)
I have memories about the Perseid showers, one being extremely torrid and will never, ever be told.
A nice sweet one though involved my family (Mom, Dad, brother and sister and I) sitting on our deck, wrapped in blankets watching the sky all night... We did a lot of stuff together as a family but that was one of the few things we did that everybody enjoyed.
At August 14, 2007 9:42 AM,
Joanna said…
Thats the Plough / Big Dipper / Ursa Major etc...
At August 14, 2007 10:08 AM,
Lucinda said…
"shooting stars" "big dippers" - I suppose that a greater intelligence might just smile at our use of language as we pause from killing each other, mocking others and generally finding subtle way to inform people how cleaver without actually considering that we can gaze at an incredible time machine.
At August 15, 2007 3:52 AM,
Emilygrae said…
Yes, I know Jo. That was a joke. =)
At August 18, 2007 7:18 AM,
Anonymous said…
Nothing like a little astro-photography to bring out the geek in me, but if you want to avoid the star tails try:
600 / focal-length-in-mm = time in seconds. ex: 600/70mm = 8.5 seconds,
or less.
At August 18, 2007 7:45 PM,
Joanna said…
Gotcha Emily... I was confused by an american trying irony... not used to it :)
Thanks anonymous. I did a little research on it. I actually quite like the trails though.. ;)
At August 21, 2007 1:01 AM,
Josephine said…
Cool pic honey.
I went out to look for the Perseids too. I'm lucky where I live in that there's very little light pollution. We got a few - one really big, long, trail, and lots of little ones. A bit of a quick calculation suggested that the bright one we saw covered about 15 miles of sky in the second or so we saw it :-)
Not fantastic though - remember a meteor shower of a few years ago, the sky was full of them :-)
Jo x
(PS I'm back. Again.)
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