Friday (25-November-2011) — New Jersey

Late Autumn Night Sky over New Jersey: Meteor Trails and Time-lapse Video.

I wanted to see how the new Nikon 1 V1 camera performs doing night sky photography. I set up the camera with the 10 mm f/2.8 lens, and the following settings: ISO 100, manual exposure, 30 second exposure, f/2.8, focus infinity (Long exposure NR = off). I used the interval timer, but found that I needed to set the interval to 40 seconds because it takes ~10 seconds to transfer the image from the buffer to the memory card. This is unfortunate, since it would leave a gap if I tried to create stacked star trails (using the Star Trails program). I did manage to catch an image of a meteor trail early (5:28 AM) in the morning. The late night and early morning images were combined to make a Night Sky time-lapse video.

Meteor Trail captured with a Nikon 1 V1 camera and 10 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 10 mm, f/2.8, 30 sec). (David J Mathre)
Meteor Trail captured with a Nikon 1 V1 camera and 10 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 10 mm, f/2.8, 30 sec). (David J Mathre)