Photographing stars and metor showers
 

I want to photograph the up-coming metor shower, but I have no idea what I am doing. I a standard camera and a digital camera.

O, and a VHS C video Camera

Thanks

Re: Photographing stars and metor showers
 

You're welcome! Glad I could be of help.

Most helpful foto is, and willing to listen.


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MattK:

I don't know how well that equipment would work (I've never tried photographing any occurance of that sort, myself).

Try one of these specialty search engines and see if they can answer your questions:

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Or you can try a more general search engine too!

Google
Hotbot
Yahoo!
Dogpile
Alta Vista All The Web
Lycos
AOL
Teoma

Hope those help.

- Katie

/me is more helpful than the silly Tigerbolt boys <edit> and Amy </edit> ;) :p

I've never tried this myself, mainly because, well, I don't know... so I don't have an answer for you. You might want to check out the forums on DP Review (Digital Photography), here's a quick link to the forums: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/

Just pick the forum for your digital camera. I've seen one thread about this on the Olympus forum already, so I'm sure there are more on the other forums. And there are certainly older threads about past meteor showers.

MissInformation

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If you have a telescope, there are attachments available that allow you to place most 35mm cameras against the eyepiece and take photos.

If you just want to take photos of the night sky, and don't have a telescope, it's bit different. The only advice I can offer is that you shouldn't use a flash ;)

I'll ask my brother if he knows anything more about this - as he's something of an astronomy geek.

If you get any good photos, blow them up for a background. I'll tell you the specificatons latter if you want to know.

I've never tried this either, but I think I will this shower. I'm a bit af an amatuer photographer, so here's some tips:

Your standard camera, on a tripod, is probably best suited for this kind of thing. Probably, very few digital cameras allow sufficiently long exposures.
[edit] The standard camers is an SLR, I assume [/edit]

You actually don't want to magnifiy the sky. No telescope needed. You need to observe a large area and gather all the light there possible, so a good lens would be a standard 50mm f/1.8 , and even wider if you want.

The camera needs to be able to take long exposures. See if your camera has a "bulb" or B setting, where you push the shutter down and it stays open as long as the shutter is pressed. If it's an electronic SLR, it might allow long exposures without the B setting. To keep the shutter open with bulb, you need to get a cable shutter release, so the camera doesn't shake while it's pressed. In a shower, 5-10min of exposure should caputre alot of meteors.

Also, you need some really fast film, like ISO 1600 or 3200 . You can get some probably at any little camera shop.

And whever you do, point the camera away from the radiant.

Good luck!