Meteor Shower

[dawesy]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/syd ... 27941.html

Not sure how such a thing would shoot, but for those that shoot the heavens I'd sure like to see the results. Of course I have a Christmas party tonight, so don't expect too much form me!

[Onyx]

Where's a good open place to see this, ideally a little out of Sydney? I thought about driving up to the Blue Mths, but it's full of trees and other junk in the way.

Hunter Valley? Flat open spaces, hopefully not too much light pollution...

[Raskill]

Maybe go to the Mountains, and head down the Kings Tablelands at Wentworth falls. It takes you out on a plateau and is nice and open, and dark.

Happy trails. Star trails that is...

[Handlebars]

Did anyone get a good shot of this?

I stayed up for it, and saw 20+, of which 3 were really large and clear.

I also took about 150 shots, but missed all of them...

My approach was to pick an area in the sky, and continually shoot, hoping to get one (or 2 or 3) in a long exposure. A number of them shot by in frame, but always when I was playing with settings, or in between shots.

As this was my first attempt at night shooting I took some bloody awful shots. However sitting outside at 1am with a nice cold beer and shooting the stars was a very pleasant way to spend a few hours.

Next year I'll try to get a wide angle lens,set the camera before it gets dark, and may even drive out of suburbia to try again!

So if you got a few shots, please post and reveal your settings

[radar]

Send a PM to member Gordon. He works in an observatory so he may have gotten some.

Cheers,

André

[Big Red]

i found a big open area on top of a hill at Jimna and set up my swag and saw 5 ...

they were so quick and faint i doubt whether they would have shown up so i didn't bother trying to take a pic ... just enjoyed the stars until i fell asleep.

[SteveGriffin]

There has been activity pretty much every morning for the past 2 weeks. Well worth a look but the early rise is a killer.

[Gordon]

There has been activity pretty much every morning for the past 2 weeks. Well worth a look but the early rise is a killer.

Just came across this thread, I haven't had much time to look in here recently...
There are plenty of meteors to be seen every night under a dark sky, but the Geminids were on top of the usual sporadic meteor rate. I spent about 90 mins watching from home around the predicted peak of the shower and saw about 1/minute on average. The shower wasn't quite as rich as last year according to a colleague's meteor camera network.
I left the D200 with 20mm lens running on the veranda when I went to bed, and then took it up the hill to take more photos from there, but after a quick run through them on the camera, the only bright one I recorded was when I was asleep. Its still in the camera though, and not on my HD yet... and not really all that spectacular.

Gordon