I’m old enough to remember when that was a big factor in dating, though not quite old enough to have used it in such a manner. But in this case, it’s only in reference to two meteor showers due to peak in a few days, the southern delta Aquariids and the alpha Capricornids, both coming in right before the end of the month, which means anytime from this point on. Unfortunately, there’s
Tag: night sky photography
Blink and you missed it
The conditions held and I did get out to watch Spica disappear behind the moon. I tried a short video clip, unable to tell if it was actually capturing Spica or not but suspecting that it wasn’t – the frame rates for video translate to a pretty short shutter speed and even as bright as it was in comparison, Spica was still pretty dim. Upon returning home, I found that
Preliminary
Just now, took a peek out there as the sky was darkening, noticed that it was more than clear enough, and did a couple of test shots. I also noticed another speck in the viewfinder and reframed, but I was still working handheld and sharpness was lacking. As I was setting up the tripod and getting the remote release out and the camera set for mirror lockup*, the last little light
Utterly robbed
My calendar has been reminding me of the Geminids meteor shower for the past week or so, which was due to peak overnight last night, but the temperatures have dropped significantly for the past week as well. Since the Geminids are touted to be one of the better showers and we had nice clear skies, I finally got motivated to bundle up, go out, and try.
And indeed, it was a notably active shower, more
Why, yes – yes I did
I don’t know why I did, because the results were as expected, but I made the attempt again early this morning to capture some meteors. It was, at least, quite clear.
Not a glimmer of shooting star in there anywhere, nor did I see any no matter where I looked. So I boosted ISO to 6400 and just did some night sky exposures of this nature – but this is the funny thing:
Not a mighty roar
Well, it’s the Leonids meteor shower again, or at least the time for it, and since the skies looked pretty clear when I checked, I did a quick trip down to the lake to see what I could capture. However, once I got down there, the clouds rolling in were quite evident, especially well to the southwest as seen here. Still, the skies above were clear, and I re-aimed for a wider
Cut y’self
Many things happening this week, in many directions, so little of it was photography. Part of this was, I was getting some warning signs that my ‘Main’ harddrive was about to fail, and I replaced it, copying it over onto a new drive – but the program that I used took something like 27-28 hours to complete this task (just over a terabyte of info,) and I suspect it would
Not much charm
While I did not announce it like I often do here, we’ve just passed the peak of the Perseids meteor shower, tied in with some halfway decent viewing conditions and, unlike many other showers in the past, acceptable temperatures to be standing out in a dark location for hours at a time. I actually went out to try and capture
This is not a comet
It’s probably not too far from what I would have captured if I tried, admittedly, and the intention was to try, just a little later on. This came Friday night, when I stepped out to check conditions and decided to shoot the first-quarter (“half”) moon real quick. This is not the first-quarter moon either, but the [ahem] ‘dagger’ in
Living in the past I
I noticed in passing that the post count was at 2,470 at the end of last month, which meant that I could reach 2,500 posts at the end of the year – if I did better than I have been. I wasn’t worried about it – I’d prefer to post regarding content rather than arbitrary numbers – but then this afternoon I realized how I could meet this goal and have a bit of