For this year's Perseid shower, other things got in the way of getting out to a dark sight to view it or to even be up watching pre-dawn on the 12th but that evening we sat out in the back yard with two of our grandkids, Jack and Harper, to try and catch at least a few bright ones.
The good news is that we did each see at least one. The bad news is that was before I set up my camera to capture this time lapse video. The other challenge besides the light-polluted skies of Dallas are how many other lights there are in our back yard. The ever-changing color of the neon clock in the kitchen, visible through the back door or even the time one of us went to the bathroom (the window next to the back door) were the least of the problems. I'd turned out our patio LED light strings and the solar path lights but neighbors to the west and southwest have a lot of yard lights on all night. This video represents from about 11pm through about 3am and it was never truly dark out there.
Normally, I would have had the camera at about ISO 4000, f/2.4 and shooting 20 second shots. The best I could do without blowing things out was ISO 400, f/2.8 and 8 second shots. That was still enough to catch stars rotating around Polaris and should have caught any bright bolides. Sadly, the only lights in the sky besides stars were aircraft going to and from Love Field and DFW.
I had been tempted to go out east of Dallas by myself about 5am to see if I could shoot the Perseids from a darker sight. Glad I didn't bother as the clouds rolling in would have spoiled the view under even the darkest skies.
View full screen to catch the motion of the stars.
The journey continues beyond 2009... check it out!
