Keep in mind that the longer your exposure, the less sensitive you will be
to meteors. For maximum sensitivity to meteors, you'd like your exposure
time to be no longer than a typical meteor lasts- say a couple of seconds.
Anything more and you'll start losing fainter events. But with most cameras,
if your exposure gets too short you spend more time between exposures than
you do imaging the sky, and you start missing meteors or catching partial
trails. 30 seconds is probably a good compromise.
Using video is another solution. It maximizes sensitivity, but at the
expense of total pixel count.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Hendry" <p...@pict.co.uk>
To: <Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 11:20 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Off topic- the weather IS getting worse + On
topic Geminid pic
Thank you Carl. I did set out to capture half a dozen emanating from the
radiant with something earthbound in the foreground, but just too much
light pollution to hold the shutter open more than a couple of minutes
even looking completely at the sky. I think I'd cut it back to 30 secs or
so during the successful frame to avoid blowing the glow on the clouds too
much. I'll try again at the next promising opportunity, and make plans for
a more rural location. I think you either have to shoot for a shortish
shutter exposure/wide angle to minimise star trailing or use a long
shutter speed to emphasise the trails. To my eye, very short star trails
make it look like you've got a dodgy tripod. I may keep my eye open for a
used Meade and adapt the equatorial mount, but that approach would cause a
smeared foreground if there were terrestrial objects in frame, though I
could get round that with multiple exposures.
Regards,
John
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