David's Images of the Day Photoblog
I had two cameras out all night last night. I captured images of a few Leonid Meteors. I now need to put together some time-lapsed movies of the night sky. It is clear again tonight, so will try again with some different angles.
Perseid Meteor Shower. I know that I said that I was going to go out to get more images of Clearwing Hummingbird moths, but the sky was finally clear last night and I had an opportunity to view the Perseid Meteor Shower. I set up two cameras on the back deck — a Nikon D4 camera with a 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye and a Nikon D800 camera with a 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens. Each was set to take 30 sec images (ISO 400, f/2.8). With the D800 camera and 14-24 lens I took the time to take a set of images to find out where I got the best focus for stars at infinity. For the 16 mm fisheye lens I just used infinity on the lens. This was a mistake. The images I got with the 14-24 lens where I spent the time to test the focus were a lot better, especially with the 32 MB sensor on the D800 camera.
The first image below is a single exposure with a meteor trail using the D800 & 14-24 mm lens. I really don’t understand the physics of other images on the internet of the Perseid Meteor Shower that show long exposures of the night sky (1-6 hours) that show multiple meteor trails where both the stars and the ground/landscape don’t move.
I have included several ~1 hour star trail images that are composites of the 30 second images (using the Startrails.exe program). The sky in New Jersey is not that dark, and the glow in the bottom of the image is the light from Princeton and Trenton. If you look close, several do show 1 or more meteor trails that were visible in New Jersey.
The sky was clear last night so I set up two cameras to record the night sky. The SpaceWeather site reported that the Quadrantids meteor shower should peak in the early morning hours. The Nikon D3x with a 24 mm f/1.4G lens was set up to look north above my roof. I used an external power supply for this camera so I wouldn’t need to change batteries during the night. The second camera was a Nikon D3 with a 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens looking south. For both cameras, I used the MC-35 remote set for 59 second exposures, once a minute (the extra second is needed to transfer the image from the camera to the memory card). It was cold (getting down to 10° F), and I was glad that at least one camera was using an external power supply. I had to change the battery in the D3 every 2 hours, and even then it was so cold that the battery ran out before the time. The following are a meteor trail image and a time-lapsed video of everything from the night.
Repeat from last night, but at ISO 400. Nikon 1 V1 camera with the 10 mm f/2.8 lens, and the following settings: ISO 400, 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 leaves a gap if I tried to create stacked star trails (using the Star Trails program). I did manage to catch a few images of meteor trails. The meteor trails were distinct from the many jet trails. The first two were a pair, but faint, the third is caught in two images with the missing section due to the ~10 second delay between images. The late night and early morning images were combined to make a Night Sky 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.
