Last night was to be the peak of the Perseid meteor showers. We left our room at 11:00PM and began the half mile trek up the hill behind the hotel in the dark. We crested the hill can dropped down below the top on the other side effectively eliminating the lights behind us and set up in a flat grassy area. I had a two camera bracket mounted to my tripod with two D3S bodies mounted…one with the AF-S 14-24mm @ 14mm and the other with the AF-S 24-70mm @24mm. I wanted to try to capture star trails with meteors flying every which way through them. And while that is exactly what happened as we sat back and enjoyed the show, it was not what translated to the pixels. Not a single meteor showed up on the images. Even though we were away from the city lights the sky was still not the rich black of complete darkness for one thing and I was goofing around trying to outsmart the meteor showers and capture and image I had in my minds eye. While I didn’t get the image I had visualized I did manage to score a couple of great star trails…
I kept watching the Milky Way throughout the night, marveling at it’s expanse across the sky so, just before we packed it in and made our way down the trail I tried a few frames and am quite pleased with my first attempt…
Back in the room, I looked out from the balcony at the night sky and just couldn’t help myself. I set up the tripod with both cameras, changed out the batteries and set the camera to shooting star trails while I got a few winks. My camera kept shooting into the lightening sky as dawn approached and darned if I didn’t finally get one, lone meteor way…off…in…the…distance I added a few of the lighter images to the stack to get the blue sky and the lighter horizon…
So, while I didn’t get the shot of the meteors I had set out for, I did add some new astro images to my files, my husband and I spent several relaxing hours sitting under the stars enjoying the show together and I learned what doesn’t work. I’ll be better prepared next time. This night sky photography is pretty cool…I could get hooked…as if I need more to shoot beyond the sunrise to sunset hours!
Images created with Nikon D3S, AF-S 14-24mm, AF 16mm Fisheye on Lexar Digital Media
