I bought myself a new lens for my Nikon D7000. It's a Rokinon 8mm F3.5 fisheye. These lenses received great reviews from various photography sites, and cost 1/3 the price of the Nikon name-brand equivalent. I bought it for a couple of reasons: firstly, to fill an artistic gap in my lens collection for regular photography, and, secondly, to assist with super-wide field star trail and meteor shots.
This past morning (August 12th, 2012), the Perseids meteor shower peaked. My kids and I headed out to a dark sky spot and watched the show. They'd never seen a meteor shower before and were in for a real treat. We were out for about four hours, and saw some very impressive meteors ranging from dull fast-movers to brilliant bolides (fireballs). The kids were super-impressed, and it was admittedly one of the best shows I have seen for quite some years. I counted maybe 90-110 bright meteors in the four hour period we were out for.
Below if a star trails shot from 2.5 hrs from this morning. The first 1.5 hrs I had my camera set up incorrectly, naturally. Bottom right, you can see Jupiter and the Moon rising. There are at least a couple of meteors in there.
Below are several distinct meteor shots from my night's imaging. They are cropped from the full frame, and using the 8mm lens the quality is so-so when cropped like this. The images don't do the real meteors (and their sheer brilliance) quite the justice they deserve.
2 comments:
I've just stumbled onto your blog! Cool pictures! I was working night shift when the shower peaked and I hoped to glimpse a few but the horrendous light pollution and cloud meant I didn't see any at all.
Thanks, Caveman! There were a few very bright ones that I think could have been seen from populated areas if you were looking at the right time. It was a decent show, though, overall!
Cheers,
Phil
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