Post by erikruud on Aug 13, 2012 7:47:04 GMT -6
I went camping this weekend with my daughter and two of my sisters' families. Altogether there were eight of us on the trip.
We went to Shabbona Lake State park because it is close by and because my one sister wanted to camp somewhere they could use their kayaks.
We had been to Sabbona before and I knew that the majority of the campground is heavily wooded, but I knew there were areas in the park with good views of the sky. As it turned out the three sites we picked had a fairly good view to the east, northeast and southeast, so we just sat by the edge of the road to see the meteors.
Friday night was completely clear and we probably saw at least two dozen meteors in two hours. There was a large group of trees blocking our view of Perseus. It was tall enough that it Cassiopeia wasn't fully visible until about 9:45. We sat and watched and I pointed out the constellations with my GLP. The sky was dark enough to actually see the Milky Way. There were enough stars visible that I had a little trouble finding some of the constellations among all the other stars that I normally can't see at home.
During the day on Saturday, I set up the 102mm Mak and did some solar astronomy.
This is probably my best Afocal shot to date.
Saturday evening I baked a home made pizza cooked in the dutch oven.
After dinner the sky did not look promising as this 15 second exposure with my Canon Powershot shows.
The weather report indicated that it would clear up so were hopeful. By 9:30 just about all the clouds were gone.
My brother-in-law had brought along his Nikon D5100, but he didn't bring a tripod and he didn't know how to use the manual mode to set exposure and ISO. I took a look at it and was able to figure out how to change the settings. We set up a folding camp table and used that along with a few handy objects to prop up the camera at various angles as a substitute for a tripod.
I tried several different combinations of ISO and exposure times. We used a fish eye lens that gave us an almost 180 degree field of view and I just kept taking shots hoping to catch a meteor or two. I actually did better than I thought at the time.
For example, this shot has one passing just below Vega in the middle of the picture, but on the cameras screen it didn't look like I had got it.
There was a lot of air traffic as well. This guy flew right over us.
But the "Death Star" was in the area and took care of him. ;D
Disclaimer! No laser pointers were aimed at aircraft. All laser pointer use was done responsibly and safely.
There is one in the upper right corner.
I got two in this shot.
And then the best one of all.
Cropped and rotated.
I don't know how many we saw, but I estimate there were at least 30 per hour.
We went to Shabbona Lake State park because it is close by and because my one sister wanted to camp somewhere they could use their kayaks.
We had been to Sabbona before and I knew that the majority of the campground is heavily wooded, but I knew there were areas in the park with good views of the sky. As it turned out the three sites we picked had a fairly good view to the east, northeast and southeast, so we just sat by the edge of the road to see the meteors.
Friday night was completely clear and we probably saw at least two dozen meteors in two hours. There was a large group of trees blocking our view of Perseus. It was tall enough that it Cassiopeia wasn't fully visible until about 9:45. We sat and watched and I pointed out the constellations with my GLP. The sky was dark enough to actually see the Milky Way. There were enough stars visible that I had a little trouble finding some of the constellations among all the other stars that I normally can't see at home.
During the day on Saturday, I set up the 102mm Mak and did some solar astronomy.
This is probably my best Afocal shot to date.
Saturday evening I baked a home made pizza cooked in the dutch oven.
After dinner the sky did not look promising as this 15 second exposure with my Canon Powershot shows.
The weather report indicated that it would clear up so were hopeful. By 9:30 just about all the clouds were gone.
My brother-in-law had brought along his Nikon D5100, but he didn't bring a tripod and he didn't know how to use the manual mode to set exposure and ISO. I took a look at it and was able to figure out how to change the settings. We set up a folding camp table and used that along with a few handy objects to prop up the camera at various angles as a substitute for a tripod.
I tried several different combinations of ISO and exposure times. We used a fish eye lens that gave us an almost 180 degree field of view and I just kept taking shots hoping to catch a meteor or two. I actually did better than I thought at the time.
For example, this shot has one passing just below Vega in the middle of the picture, but on the cameras screen it didn't look like I had got it.
There was a lot of air traffic as well. This guy flew right over us.
But the "Death Star" was in the area and took care of him. ;D
Disclaimer! No laser pointers were aimed at aircraft. All laser pointer use was done responsibly and safely.
There is one in the upper right corner.
I got two in this shot.
And then the best one of all.
Cropped and rotated.
I don't know how many we saw, but I estimate there were at least 30 per hour.
