Soon it’s time again: the earth crosses the track of the comet Swift Tuttle on her way around the sun. The comet has lost here, in sundeck, a lot of breakage. And if they feel in the earth’s atmosphere, we see shooting stars. This year should be expected with particularly many shooting stars, as the earth happens this time exactly a trumber field, which the comet has lost 4479 in 1479.
Startless steels, which arise from such a trumberfield on the ground train, seem to have their origins in the sky in a single point for the observer on earth. This is a similar effect than when you drive in winter by car through snowflakes. The earth is in the days when the comet run is queried, just in the direction of the constellation Perseus on the way. Therefore, it looks like the star tracks had their origin in this constellation. Therefore, your name comes: "Perseid".
The eastern starry sky in mid-August at 2 o’clock in the morning
The constellation Perseus can be found quite simply in the morning hours: high in the sudost you can see a rhombus from 4 bright stars, the so-called autumn viereck in the constellation Pegasus. From the left star of this rhombe, horizontal goes on a chain of Hellerer stars left (the constellation Andromeda), which meets on her left end on a vertical sheet of stars, which form the constellation Perseus.
What is to expect? – A look at the numbers
"Round star race", "Up to 100 shoots per hour", "Fireworks at night sky": Each year, every year the headlines are, and many people who look for a true shooting rain rain are then mostly destroyed. Because if you have the "Up to 100 shoots per hour" Seen by jewelters, the following picture results:
- "Up to 100" is a maximum value. A guarantee that this is achieved does not exist.
- From the (maximum) 100 shooting stars, the half goes down on the other side of the earth, so we can not see that.
- And if you distribute the remaining 50 to the hour, you have average less than one shooting star per minute. And even there it may be that you see 3 or 4 shooting stars in a short period of time, and then no single minutes.
So you should, before one is too extremed, from the idea of a continuous "Rain" from starters say goodbye. But what you can expect is that you see a handful of shooting stars with a long observation (at least 15 minutes).
When are the persis to see?
"The maximum becomes in the early hours of the 12. August expected", Homes again in the news for this year. But that does not mean that the Persiden only in the night of the 11. On the 12. August to watch. Already in the last Julinacht the first persians are traveling, it will then be more from night to night, with the maximum around the 11. August around. Thereafter, however, the number per night decreases rapidly – after the 16. August you will hardly get a Persiden’s shooting star.
But that also means that you do not necessarily on the 12th.8th. in the early hours for observation must. A few nights earlier or one, two night later you have the chance. This year is a recommendable between the 8. and the 12th of August "on the hunt" to go, because then the increasing moon is still quite luminous skew at the evening sky and has gone down to midnight. Thereafter, the moon will be brighter from night to night, and a bright moon that exites the sky is not a good companion for the shooting star hunt.
Starting stars to catch the gluck and patient thing. To photograph them there are several strategies.
The ideal time is the ideal time for the observation of the persis between two and four in the morning. Because then we look from our location on the earth "in the direction of travel", without the sun already at the observation.
Photography shooting stars
Everyone has ever seen a shooting star, will probably remind themselves well: a bright object, bright as a star, which swaps in fractions of a second over half the sky and disappeared as fast as it has surfaced. Something completely different than an airplane, which flows down slowly, or a satellite, which also slowly pulls his train in the sky with a uniform light. For the photographer, this means mainly two:
- The shooting stars are not tightly limited to the constellation of Perseus, you have to cover a coarse area of the sky with the camera. So if possible, use a wide-angle lens, and the camera high in the sky direction east, possibly with the constellation Perseus in the lower left corner. So one covers the coarse flat, on the shooting stars are to be expected.
- Startless steels are fast. For long exposure times, you have more opportunities to catch one or more shooting stars. So the best aperture and exposure time set so that you can expose to the same time without the sky on the pictures be bright. But attention: Do not turn the aperture too much, otherwise the shooting stars may be too light sweat.
How to proceed with the camera with the camera’s hunting is the way.
As a starting point I recommend ISO 100, aperture F / 5.6 and 3 to 5 minutes of exposure time, but this is very dependent on the camera and the lens depending on, so try a few recordings before. A sturdy tripod is understood by itself.
However, from a particular exposure time, you will not receive round star illustration anymore, so that star traces are in the picture. The concrete times are dependent on the focal length (and the sensor groove) – the fist formula is here at 300 / focal length. Work with a 50-millimeter lens, so you can expose six seconds and get point-forming stars. In this time, however, a shooting star is almost impossible. Please contact, for example, with recording series or interval recordings. These were able to use them later for shooting stars or startrail collagen, in which they combine many recordings later on the PC (for example, with software such as the cost required Starry Landscape Stacker or the Free Sequator). However, they also produce a lot of image files, which must be considered when choosing the memory card and later for the time required.
And if you have a travel motion like the SkyTracker or a Pentax mirror reflex camera with AstroTracer: Switch this post. And with a little gluck you then have one or more shooting stars in the picture and yet point-shaped stars.