Next time, use faster film...
Nov. 20th, 2001 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpThe processed film from the Sunday morning's Leonid meteor shower yielded just slightly better results than my Kodak digital camera. I caught exactly two meteors in the 24 shot roll, if we don't consider the multiple exposure at the end of the roll, which looks like nothing intelligible, though you can see oddly directed streaks on the image.
The stars in this image are from the constellation Leo, and shows the head of the lion just over the treetops. The stars in the photo look like parallel lines owing to the fact that this was a long-duration exposure, which allows the earth to move with respect to the sky, causing the starts to appear to move. The irregular brightness of the star trails is due to the clouds that were moving through the area at the time (when a cloud blocks the light from a star, the star "disappears" from the image).
The meteor is the streak at the right side of the image, and its brightness appeared to vary above and below the sensitivity level of the film as it steamed through the sky.
This photo was taken past our house, looking toward the north. The "W" of Cassiopeia is visible above the flat part of the roof to the left of the chimney; the Little Dipper is in the upper right quadrant of the image, with Polaris being the bright star just to the right of center near the top of the photo (the one around which all the other stars appear to move). The meteor in this scanned image is barely visible, located about a third of the way up and a quarter of the way from the left edge. The streak builds from nothing and then fades away as the sand-size particle that caused it vaporizes upon hitting the atmosphere.
The lesson is clear. Next time (and there will be a next time), use faster film. This was shot using 400 speed Fujifilm. I could have (and should have) bought the 1600 speed film, which would have brought out more detail.
Cheers...
The stars in this image are from the constellation Leo, and shows the head of the lion just over the treetops. The stars in the photo look like parallel lines owing to the fact that this was a long-duration exposure, which allows the earth to move with respect to the sky, causing the starts to appear to move. The irregular brightness of the star trails is due to the clouds that were moving through the area at the time (when a cloud blocks the light from a star, the star "disappears" from the image).
The meteor is the streak at the right side of the image, and its brightness appeared to vary above and below the sensitivity level of the film as it steamed through the sky.
This photo was taken past our house, looking toward the north. The "W" of Cassiopeia is visible above the flat part of the roof to the left of the chimney; the Little Dipper is in the upper right quadrant of the image, with Polaris being the bright star just to the right of center near the top of the photo (the one around which all the other stars appear to move). The meteor in this scanned image is barely visible, located about a third of the way up and a quarter of the way from the left edge. The streak builds from nothing and then fades away as the sand-size particle that caused it vaporizes upon hitting the atmosphere.
The lesson is clear. Next time (and there will be a next time), use faster film. This was shot using 400 speed Fujifilm. I could have (and should have) bought the 1600 speed film, which would have brought out more detail.
Cheers...
