Perseids 2018

Marc R. O'Leary

Marc R. O'Leary

EF5
Joined
Sep 7, 2013
Messages
710
Location
Andale, KS
Looks like it's going to be a good show this year, with the moon setting early. Clear skies forecast in CO.

Peak set for the overnight between Aug12-13. Lucky me, I don't work on Mondays. Get out there with a lawn chair and a couple beers and look up/east. Personally, I use a hammock.

I've already seen a few nice slow long trackers low in the sky.

Good luck to all you meteor chasers!



@Jeremy Perez Looking forward to your shots of this years shower!
 
Thanks, Marc, I've been planning to get out either Saturday or Sunday night for a while now. The monsoon is naturally on an uptick though, so it could get clouded out.
 
I ended up heading out both last night and the night before. Saturday night I was looking for an old abandoned cabin/farmhouse I saw while chasing last month near Last Chance, CO. Unfortunately I forgot to mark it with my GPS app and left too late in the evening to find it visually. I didn't do very well for the meteor shower, but I found a few prairie rattlesnakes out on the highway.

2018-8-11 | Prairie (Western) Rattlesnake by Bill Giles, on Flickr

Yesterday I headed out early, but west into the Rockies this time. I found a fairly decent place to set up northwest of Grant, CO and set up. However I don't do much of an astrophotography, so most everything I got either shoots out of frame, has an airplane in it, or I just plain missed focus. This is the best shot I got.

2018-8-13 | Astrophotography (Perseids) by Bill Giles, on Flickr

And one final shot here. No meteors...just liked the composition.

2018-8-13 | Astrophotography 1 by Bill Giles, on Flickr
 
I was up on Guanella Pass last night. Somewhat disappointed by the low meteor counts, and no real fireballs. Was blown away how well the light pollution from Denver loomed over Mts. Bierstadt and Evans to the east. Also a lot of people up there despite it being midnight on a Sunday night.
 
I've lost motivation for spending a sleepless night on a standard played-out rural meteor composition, so I went into downtown St. Louis to experiment with city foregrounds. I figured it wasn't doable - but I don't think anyone has ever really tried to see. The best I could do with a meteor-ready dark-sky exposure in the city was 2 seconds, 800ISO at F3.5 on the Canon 10-22mm. Any longer exposure/higher ISO combination blows out the sky too much. Even then, only a couple of the brightest stars show up at 2s/F3.5/800ISO. I'd need a big fireball for anything remotely interesting. Regardless, I never saw any meteors in the hour I stayed out. If I had kept at it all night racking up some serious shutter mileage, I might have caught something, but I wasn't feeling it. Again, not anything unexpected, but I at least wanted to try for proof-of-concept.
 
I was able to see a pretty decent show from my backyard from about 10pm thru 3am. The biggest issue was the smoke/haze that drowned out all but the brightest meteors. To me it felt like a moon lit night. This year was a watching year, the cameras stayed packed away.

Maybe saw a hand full of bright long trackers and some good lingering trails. Good colors too.

Geminids next, hopefully it'll be clear and no snow on the ground.

I think for next year's Perseids I'm going to head out to one of my secluded spots in eastern CO, although being able to just walk inside to bed at 3am is pretty nice
 
Jeff Duda said:
I was up on Guanella Pass last night. Somewhat disappointed by the low meteor counts, and no real fireballs. Was blown away how well the light pollution from Denver loomed over Mts. Bierstadt and Evans to the east. Also a lot of people up there despite it being midnight on a Sunday night.
Click to expand...

Guanella, particularly south side, is my favorite place to camp. Unfortunately the dry summer and fires precluded any camping thus far, but fall camping is actually my preference. Don't wait too late though, or the bears will come for your pork skewers...trust me.
 
Dan Robinson said:
I've lost motivation for spending a sleepless night on a standard played-out rural meteor composition, so I went into downtown St. Louis to experiment with city foregrounds. I figured it wasn't doable - but I don't think anyone has ever really tried to see. The best I could do with a meteor-ready dark-sky exposure in the city was 2 seconds, 800ISO at F3.5 on the Canon 10-22mm. Any longer exposure/higher ISO combination blows out the sky too much. Even then, only a couple of the brightest stars show up at 2s/F3.5/800ISO. I'd need a big fireball for anything remotely interesting. Regardless, I never saw any meteors in the hour I stayed out. If I had kept at it all night racking up some serious shutter mileage, I might have caught something, but I wasn't feeling it. Again, not anything unexpected, but I at least wanted to try for proof-of-concept.
Click to expand...

I would LOVE to see this photo come to fruition someday. Fireball over the arch.
 
I headed out to Sunset Crater National Monument Saturday evening with some friends for Perseid watching, stargazing, and telescope viewing. Even though the display was not as strong as 2016, there were definitely enough bright, long-trained meteors to be crowd pleasers. I love listening to the mix of excited 'AH!'s with people seeing a good one followed by aggravated 'AWWW!'s for the ones that were facing the wrong direction. I didn't wind up counting observed meteors or anything like that. I did set up the camera to try framing some trails with Mars and wound up with a couple that I liked. The sky glow is from Flagstaff to the southwest of the monument.

IMG_7484.JPG

IMG_7497.JPG
 
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