The first day of Perseid chasing was a fun one. Getting kicked out of our first observation site on that night left a bad taste with me. I always have contingency plans, but I was determined to use the Meigs/Northerly Island site for the duration of the observation session for the second night. I talked with a supervisor about the Chicago Astronomers wanting to observe & photograph the meteors - and we were cleared to stay as long as we wanted...which is what I should have done the first night. Although park security eyed us all night, we were not bothered by anybody. A real special treat and I fully thank the Park Police & Harbor Patrol for their courtesy.

I got to the Northerly Island site at 9:30 pm to set up and get my angles down. My Astro Phone rang throughout the night with eager participants desiring to join in or with questions. The only caveat was that the parks close at 11:00pm - and although those already present were fine to stay, late arrivals were turned away by park security.

Navy Pier shot off their Wednesday fireworks in the near distance and musician "Jason Mraz" was practicing before his concert on Thursday...and providing background entertainment.



Chicago Astronomers and enthusiasts filtered in throughout the early evening, some new faces bringing their own chairs and others improvising...



This night's session will not be a good one, as compared with our previous one of the night before. For long stretches of time...there were no meteors - and I was feeling bad that our visitors came out for nothing. But slowly, some started to show..and all of a sudden - it was ok - with smiles and oohhhs. Then some more, some good bright ones too. And again, not located in one section of the sky.



The Moon was scheduled to rise at 10:40 pm and I had camera/scope ready. Offering views of not only the Moon to our guests, but Jupiter as well - putting on a good display of planetary banding and Satellite positioning...two on each side. John worked the scope and was answering questions/provided astro data for our guests. He's too cool.





It was a small active group, searching for meteors, talking astronomy ...and discovering how they found out about this Perseid observing session - was through Google searches...and The Chicago Astronomer popped up high in the results. Sweet!

I had tunes playing for ambiance...some classical, some space themed, some ethereal. It adds to the exploratory nature of the event and I do it at the Adler as well for our visitors.






It was now about midnight and it was work/school night after all...and our group thinned out, until it was just me and the Perseids. I was staying for the duration and see if I could capture some via camera. When along comes my bud Santiago - camera equipment in hand - who parked far away, (as they blocked off the access road after 11:00 pm), and cabbed/walked to the site. That's dedication & enthusiasm!

So, the all night session was on - again.



I took the more Northeasterly point and Santi took the South Eastern, hoping to cover more ground and as the shower cone was rising higher, zenith meteors were very scarce and viewed closer to 20/30 degrees in elevation or so.



We shot hundreds of frames, (thank goodness for digital cameras and rechargeable batteries), but the elusive streaks kept avoiding our attempts. Trying to locate the meteor streams, we would swing around to where two or more appeared...but they were sucker teasers....and the vigilance continued.

I was using my Canon Powershot S3 for the meteor photographic session. ( astronomer.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ps3 ) A great camera without going into full SLR territory. I kept the ISO mid range, (200/400), and the f-stop in the 4.0 range in order to keep the ambient light pollution from "oranging" out the frames and mucking things up.

I started out making the maximun exposures that the camera has, 15 seconds, but I was annoyed at the 5 second wait for the shot to imprint to SD card memory - maybe missing out on a passing meteor. Kicking the exposure down to about 8 seconds on multiple timed shot bursts was best. ( I was using a 4 GB micro SD card in a full sized adapter.) Also, I was shooting in widefield format and in tungsten balance. (For the Leonids in November, I intend to obtain a widefield lens for the S3 to grab a larger chunk of the sky.)

I was taking so many pics that my batteries were warm. Not alarming, just so many electrons doing my bidding. I use great rechargable batteries called "Eneloops" by Sony. They take a full charge...and hold on to it without "self-discharging" while idle - as most other rechargables do. The AA eneloop battery is rated at 2000 mAh - and are of Nickel Metal Hydride composition. For this session, four batteries that my Canon takes, lasted nearly 5 hours straight of non-stop shooting before I had to swap them out for a fresh load.

I highly recommend them.

I did spend time observing the early winter sky at this opportunity, and to my shock - I caught glimpse of Orion...the bringer of winter:



Summer is going by much too quickly and not enough astronomy....but I do dig fall skies much better with an Autumn breeze.

I also caught the Pleiades, as Orion chases the girls across the night sky forever:



And the constellation Auriga, where off to the side, contains a variable star named epsilon Aurigae - which is due to dim within weeks and I'm part of the Citizen Sky ( astronomer.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=citizensky ), observation project - gathering data and sharing info with astronomers world wide. This will be a interesting research project.




It was another nice evening under stars, listening to tunes and remaining in a location not normally accessible to the general public for astronomical pursuits.



It was getting light now, but still hoping for some late meteors and still snapping away. I came out with ZERO captures, but Santi got one faint one. He wins and we take a final daybreak shot. It was 5:30 am after eight hours of looking up and only about 20 or so Perseids. It was an...ok session, for city viewing.