Photographing Meteor showers or stars - HELP

[98kotart]

Hey everyone. I hear there is supposed to be meteor showers on Tuesday. I want to photograph this but not sure what kind of scene to include during this. Does anyone have any photos of something like this and techniques you can share with me. Please share shots and info on photo and technique. I'm wondering if I should strobe an object like a tree and have the rest of the sky stars and meteors(if i can catch them. hope the weather is good.) Any help would be great. Thanks.

[inkista]

I don't do any astrophotography, but this website says the Leonids will be occurring from the 13th to the 20th, peaking on the 17/18th. So you could practice for a few days before. And the NASA website mentions 4am your time, and the fact that Mars will be in the shot, too.

[mseigafuse]

I've tried shooting meteors showers a couple of times, but never the Leonids. The Leonids are not as reliable as some of the other showers of the year (or so I read 2009 Meteor Showers). Next months are supposedly more reliable. But who knows - I've shot some of the "better" ones and hardly got anything. It looks like at least the moon will be out of your way. I got much better results upping my ISO to 400 to 800 rather than trying to shoot at lower ISO - when I did that I know I had the shutter open and I saw meteors ... but no trace of them in the images.

Here is one of mine - a Perseid. I chose to shoot over a lake. This was my 18-55mm at 18mm for 20 seconds at f/3.5.


You can see it larger on black here -
On Black: Perseid Meteor by Mike Seigafuse [Large]

I shot this at 20 seconds in order to avoid getting any star trails due to the rotation of the earth. In case you don't already know it you should be aware of the rule of 600 ..

Divide 600 by the focal length of your lens to determine the maximum exposure time you can use to avoid star trails. So for me it was 600/18 = 33 - so I technically could have gone longer (but I was also taking a series of shots and then stacking them to make a star trail (see pic below)



Here is an Orionid I caught too (middle - not the big cloud at the bottom )



I struggle with noise with my DSLR ... I may try star trails and meteors again - but if/when I do I may go back to film.

Good luck and I hope you catch some nice ones and share them.

[nikeskate875]

I found this thread on flickr where a member explains photography star trails which I found to be really useful, and I hope it helps

Flickr: Discussing HOW TO: Photograph star trails in The Art of Science