So ... did anybody else do the Leonids (2003)?

[font color=\'#000000\']Unfortunately here in Southern Ontario we had solid cloud cover after 11pm and so we were out of luck.

So sad.

Michael[/font]

[Rainer SLP]

[font color=\'#000000\']Hi swaitjd,

I took some frames here in Mexico from the 2002 Leonids ;-)). The 2003 let us see how they are ;-)))

Do not forget on Dec 13-14th we will have some other ones. I guess they are called the geminids.

http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/geminids.html

I will know next week how good they were. As you said the moon was quite strong, but I guess I saw in 3 hours around 50-60 of them. Some were quite strong.

Next week I will show some of the results in my page.

I am still an old fashioned analog Guy so it takes longer to get the results and I am not at home at the moment.[/font]

[PaulN]

[font color=\'#000000\']I drove from Boston to Plum Island (Newburyport MA, just south of New Hampshire) to take some pictures last night. The conditions were 'ok' at best, with an off and on haze that moved in as the night progressed.  

The first peak at 11:30pm was pretty weak, I only counted ~10 or so streaks from 11:30 - 12:30.  The 5:30 peak was a bit better, with meteors every minute or so, but as already mentioned, they were going in every direction.  I managed to snap off a few shots with my D60 (20sec exposure/f3.5/20mm) as seen below.

The first image is slightly out of focus.






[/font]

[PaulN]

[font color=\'#000000\']swaitjd-
  I experimented with ISO-100 & ISO-200 during the first 'peak' and unfortunately was not able to capture anything either. Thankfully I managed to capture the few shots that I did.  One thing that also bit me, was the D60's 1.6x multiplier.  I didn't realize that I had to factor that in when calculating the exposure lenght.  When my shots are viewed at actual pixel size, they show hints of star trails..

Ahh well, there's always the asteroid show in December.

 -Paul[/font]

[swaitjd]

[font color=\'#000000\']I'm in north central Florida, the weather was fantastically clear last night and this morning. I headed to the coast (Cedar Key) to try and photograph the meteor shower this morning. Michael's article was excellent background, and very helpful in preparing myself for a type of photography I'd never done before. I went out armed with my Mamiya 7II and 50mm lens (about 28mm lens on a 35mm camera, if I remember correctly), which is my widest lens. Michael's exposure tips were very helpful in getting started.

    I must say that the star of the show was the moon, not the meteor shower. First, "shower" is a bit of an overstatement, there were discernible streaks from about 4:30AM to 6:30AM, but the frequency was underwhelming. Second, the meteors were coming from just about every direction and going towards just about every direction. There was no one direction that you could point your camera towards and get more meteors. Third, the moon was exceedingly bright, so it was difficult to include it in the composition and get reasonable exposures. Not including it in the composition was still troublesome because of the overall brightness. My images are being developed, I'll get them by end of day, but I'm not particularly hopeful. I tried lost of variation on exposure times, centering around the maximum exposure time given by the formula in Michael's article (corrected for the fact that I had a MF camera).

   Those negative things said, I had lots of fun shooting the moonrise yesterday evening and the moonset this morning (hope some of those turn out!), as well as the sunrise this morning.

   Did anybody else's experiences differ from mine?[/font]

[Dan Sroka]

[font color=\'#000000\']Here in San Francisco we had a bit of haze on the horizon. Combined with that bright moon, we weren't able to see much. We got a couple good streaks, and lots of "did i see something?". Oh well. But man, Sirius was *bright*![/font]

[swaitjd]

[font color=\'#000000\']I unfortunately didn't get a single presentable shot! Basically, I took my chances using 100 ISO film instead of the 400 ISO Michael had recommended. Next time I'll know better ...  :cool:

But I did get some nice moon shots![/font]

[Rainer SLP]

[font color=\'#000000\']Hi,

Question for Michael Reichmann.

I used 100iso and 400iso Fuji Provia slide films and exposed about 1 - 2 minutes.

Should I push the 100iso film to 200iso or 400iso and the 400 iso film should I leave it at 400iso?

I shot with 15mm f2.8 Fisheye and 16mm f2.8 wide angle.

I would appreciate a tip so I do not spoil my films when I bring them to the Lab.[/font]