`Meteor Showers (Patreon)

Yesterday was the first night of the Perseid Meteor Shower, which happens every August. The plan was to go out away from the city with Kate Sweeney, however American Airlines left her stranded in Dallas for the night. Mox was going to surprise Kate by coming along, so we decided to just go out and enjoy the sky. 

This wasn't the most active Perseid I have seen but we did see plenty of Meteors. Unfortunately none passed thru a shot during exposure. In the lower right of this image, at the Big Dipper, you will see a streak - but that is just an airplane cruising at altitude.

So how can you take astro photos? It's pretty easy. Camera on Tripod. I like a wider lens, this was a rented Nikon 18-35 which never left 18mm. I pick an aperture of F8 usually and then find the right ISO to capture the stars ( using a 30 second exposure ). So this was ISO3200. You can use wider apertures to lower the iso but I am happy with 3200 on the Nikon D800. If you use longer focal lengths you will need to slow the shutter speed because you will see the star motion. 

So I had predetermined I was going to shoot at f8, now all I had to do was set the remote flash power to expose the foreground subject. I use manual flashes, Lompros, and setting this is pretty easy and fast. 

One note - Ambient exposure mixing - the ambient lighting was coming from a bright moon. Preferably there would be no moon to add to the foreground subject exposure. I could have flagged the moon as well, but I almost never do that ( don't like carrying the stuff basically ). So with that, I knew there would be some exposure induced blur. I asked Mox to sit as still as possible for a few shots, but 30 seconds is a long time and you will see some edge blur. 

Anyhow, set up the shot and waited. 

The glow behind her is the light pollution of Columbus. We didn't go as far out as I usually do. 

All in all I am pretty happy with the shots we did.