Meteor Shower
A couple of weeks ago there was a meteor shower where i live. Actually it was two small meteor showers which overlapped for a night. I've taken some pictures of the night sky before with my Canon camera and the CHDK software.
Using CHDK i usually set the exposure time between 24 and 40 seconds. Then i run the intervalometer script which repeatedly takes pictures over several hours. The good news is that i saw a few meteors. This picture is probably the best one. Now this is a compressed photo about 20% of the size and quality of the original. But you can still see the meteor breaking up as little flecks of light are all around the white line.
The bad news is that where i live i don't see a ton of stars. If i lived in a more rural area i'm sure i would have seen a bunch more meteors. The other things i had going against me was where to get a clear view of the sky and the fact that it was really cold in December. I killed two birds with one stone there, i put the camera on a tripod and set it on top of my garage. That way i could get a view of the sky without any tree interference and also i could stay warm by operating the camera out of the upstairs window.
Here's a combination of all the photos i took that night. The rotating lines you see aren't meteors, they are are the stars rotating in the sky. You could almost see the north star which would be in the bottom right corner, but the roof blocks it.
And here's the video created from those pictures. Although i forgot to "up" the contrast before i created the video, it looked better on my computer at home but now that i see it on Youtube it looks very washed out and the stars aren't very visible.
Using CHDK i usually set the exposure time between 24 and 40 seconds. Then i run the intervalometer script which repeatedly takes pictures over several hours. The good news is that i saw a few meteors. This picture is probably the best one. Now this is a compressed photo about 20% of the size and quality of the original. But you can still see the meteor breaking up as little flecks of light are all around the white line.
The bad news is that where i live i don't see a ton of stars. If i lived in a more rural area i'm sure i would have seen a bunch more meteors. The other things i had going against me was where to get a clear view of the sky and the fact that it was really cold in December. I killed two birds with one stone there, i put the camera on a tripod and set it on top of my garage. That way i could get a view of the sky without any tree interference and also i could stay warm by operating the camera out of the upstairs window.
Here's a combination of all the photos i took that night. The rotating lines you see aren't meteors, they are are the stars rotating in the sky. You could almost see the north star which would be in the bottom right corner, but the roof blocks it.
And here's the video created from those pictures. Although i forgot to "up" the contrast before i created the video, it looked better on my computer at home but now that i see it on Youtube it looks very washed out and the stars aren't very visible.
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