Early mornings of Thursday and Friday 75 meteors per hour
Mid-December brings one of the best meteor showers to town and this year will be particularly promising of a 5% waxing crescent moon below the horizon it will not interfere with viewing of the eclipse and the Milky Way. While the Galactic Center of the Milky Way is not visible in my location during this time of the year I plan to photograph over the water as it is expected to be exceptionally quiet (winds<2 mph) which hopefully will yield some nice reflections.
I am particularly happy to see that I really have essentially two identical opportunities as the peak meteor rate will be very high for both early Thursday and Friday mornings (12/14 and 12/15/2023).
After losing to the clouds last year that is really exciting
I plan to setup several cameras to take advantage of of the weather and conditions including Canon R5, an astro modified Canon R6, and a Go Pro 11 with star trail mode on pointed at Polaris with a night filter on.
Canon R5: To do list for Canon R5 with a 15mm IRIX Lens Breakthrough photography Night sky drop-in filter on a stationary tripod (so 5 second exposures for skies)
A. Capture several high accuracy images of the sky and then a couple long exposure photos of the landscape around 11:30 PM.
- Create a new folder
- Test focus and exposure settings with base folder
- Capture 3-5 photographs for accurate sky (NPF Rule 5.69 seconds, F/2.8, ISO 1600-6400 estimated)
- Turn on Long Exposure Noise Reduction
- Capture long exposure photograph for the land (F/2.8, ISO 400-800, 60-120 seconds) – long exposure noise reduction turned on.
B. Capture a time-lapse video
- Turn off long exposure noise reduction
- Create a new folder
- Use intervalometer to take 5 second photos, F/1.4, ISO 6400) every 6 seconds (10 photos per minute, every 2.4 minutes will create 1 second of a timelapse video, expect to shoot for 3 hours which should result in 75 seconds of video.
Setup a long photography setup to frame Orion, the Milky Way and highlight any meteors that happen to get captured with a camera mounted on a tracker so the field of view remains the same which will help either to add frames that have additional meteors or to simply showcase that same area of the sky. Maintaining a constant point allows the radiant to stay in the same place on the camera for hours which makes accumulation of meteors that cross the field of view to be showcased.
C. Capture a time lapse sequence as photographs and selectively use them to showcase meteors in frame and produce a Timelapse video. Both activities will benefit from removal of artifacts that will creep in if you live near an airport – you are going to have to remove planes and probably some satellites flying across the night sky that will distract from the focus on meteors. Equipment summary for this effort includes:
- Canon R6m1 on tracker
- H-alpha filter (drop-in)
- Wolverine neutral night magnetic filter (77 to 82 mm magnetic adapter)
- Breakthrough Photography UV X4 Filter (77mm)
- Sigma 28mm at F/1.4
D. Finally after getting things going with the other cameras I wanted to point a GoPro Hero Black 11 in a southerly direction to observe the flow pattern of the Star trails. A new feature introduced with the Hero Black 11, it can make for some interesting photos.
- GoPro Hero Black 11
- GoPro Hero Labs mod
- Night pollution filter
- Star trails mode
Equipment summary (to update)
Setup 1
- Camera: Canon R5m1
- Tripod
- Lens
- On-lens Filters
- Canon EF Adapter
- Drop-In Filter: Breakthrough Photography Drop-In Filter
Setup 2
- Camera: Canon R6m1 – Astro Modified by Spencer Camera
- Tripod
- Lens
- On-lens Filters
- Canon EF Adapter
- Drop-In Filter: Breakthrough Photography Drop-In Filter
