AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Seeing shooting stars11/20/2023 During a shower, of course, your chances or recording a meteor are greatly enhanced. If you take a lot of images, eventually you’ll catch a “shooting star.” Even when there is not an active meteor shower going on, it’s not uncommon to catch a “sporadic” meteor in a nightscape image. One photographic opportunity is to capture a nice nightscape with a meteor passing through it. Just keep in mind that meteors near the radiant will leave shorter trails than those appearing further across the sky. Pointing your camera in that general direction should increase your chances of catching more meteors. The radiant where all the meteors appear to originate from is in the constellation Perseus, which rises in the northeast just after midnight. The peak of the shower occurs in the early morning hours as Earth turns your location into the leading stream of the shower. The Perseids happen as Earth passes through a debris field left over from Comet Swift-Tuttle. But note that meteors are practically instantaneous, so your exposure time won't matter very much, as long as your shutter is open when one zings through your camera's field. Set exposure times the same as you would do for nightscape projects such as Milky Way shots. A fisheye lens can work well to capture the entire sky all at once. Choose a camera and wide-angle lens that will capture as much of the sky as possible - look for a wide-field lens of 14 mm or so that is at least f/2.8 or faster. You can photograph a meteor shower with a simple setup of a camera, tripod, and shutter-release cable. Of course, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, your evening would benefit from another enhancement: the occasional click of a nearby camera shutter. ![]() This composite combines several different exposures that each captured a meteor trail. The Annual Perseid Meteor shower peaks August 12th. Bring a date or a good friend for optimal enjoyment. If the weather cooperates for you, there is no better way to spend an evening than lying back on a blanket or lawn chair under the sky, counting shooting stars and making wishes. The last-quarter Moon rises after midnight and, while bright, should still allow for a decent show if the shower performs for us this year. It may be an interesting thought experiment for each of us to ask ourselves, on an individual level, what shooting stars make us feel and why.The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks next month on August 12th (and is pretty active still for a couple of days around the time). But, in general, if you are dreaming about shooting stars, know that your subconscious is likely trying to communicate something to you about your long-term wishes. wishing upon a shooting star, witnessing a meteor shower, the shooting star moving very slowly across the sky, etc.). The specifics of what the dream means in terms of your long-term goals depends upon how the shooting star behaves in your dream (i.e. ![]() While the possible meanings of shooting stars abound, it is generally agreed upon that if you see shooting stars in your dreams, your subconscious is dwelling on your long-term desires. Where we live can certainly impact how often we might see them, but if we can get away from light pollution and bring ourselves to focus on one area of the night sky for 10-15 minutes, the odds of seeing a shooting star are actually relatively high. There are around one million shooting stars that streak through Earth’s atmosphere on any given day. This is somewhat curious, considering that seeing a shooting star is not actually that rare of a phenomenon. And while there is no universally agreed upon meaning of a shooting star, the vast plethora of beliefs demonstrates that humans generally find shooting stars to be significant events. There are also beliefs that shooting stars are decidedly bad omens, akin to tears falling through the sky. There are many other cultural beliefs about the significance of shooting stars, including that they represent human souls and/or other-than-human spirits moving between cosmic realms. People believed that if the gods were looking down at Earth at that time, they would be more likely to hear and grant their wishes. This is one possible origin of the tradition of wishing upon shooting stars. In the second century, Greek astronomer Ptolemy theorized that shooting stars were evidence of the gods prying open the cosmic realms to peer down at Earth. ![]() “Meteor” is derived from the Latin “meteora,” meaning “phenomena in the heavens.” A Significant Event ![]() Meteors are the light trails created when a meteoroid, a small piece of cosmic debris that has broken off a comet or asteroid, makes contact with the earth’s atmosphere. Shooting stars, also called falling stars, are not actually stars, but meteors.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |