Perseids 2016

[BillW]

Hi,

A few observers are planning on trying some multi station imaging during the perseids.

Looks like there will be three "clusters". One in central Scotland, one in the north Midlands (Leeds/Nottingham) and one in the south of England.

Unlike trying to catch random meteors the pointings are a bit more tricky so that everyone can get a zone where there is a good chance of seeing a perseid meteor but we're working on it.

When the final pointing directions have been figured out I'll post them here, that should have been "I'll email them". (to those observers that I've been given accurate locations, I now have. (as of 15/7/16))


cheers,
Bill.

[cmaryon]

Hello. Just introducing myself. Heard of this board via a member of the UK Astronomy group on Facebook. I'm new to photographing meteor events and welcome any advice at all. Am no stranger to being up to 3am or beyond, I gather the multi-station imaging experiment is expected to be on the nights of 11th, 12th and 13th August, 1am till 3am. Would very much like to participate in this and would appreciate any guidance. Will I be in my own cluster I wonder I'm in Northampton but may go to an observation spot nearer Milton Keynes for this.

Forgive my ignorance but is a multi-station imaging event simply observers in different locations sharing their best shots, or are there parameters where we try and map the sky and therefore need to record where and when our cameras were pointing, or...something else?

Clear skies everyone

Catherine

[BillW]

Hi Catherine,
Firstly welcome aboard!

Multi station imaging requires quite a bit of planning to get good results, let alone dealing with the weather.

It involves two or more observers imaging the same volume of the atmosphere at the same time. This is so, in theory, the same meteor will be imaged from two or more directions. From this and with some number crunching the height (and maybe velocity) of the meteor can be calculated.
With sufficiently good observations even the orbit of the meteoroid can be calculated but that's a bit more tricky!

So what you need to know is the latitude and longitude of you observing location as precisely as possible down to a few metres, but this is not difficult nowadays. Set the time on your dslr as accurately as you can (to +/- a second but again not too difficult) then all you need to find is someone else crazy enough within ~100 - 120km of you to do the same...

With the various "clusters" that have already been set up it's looking like a good project if the weather behaves. Unlike solo observing where it just needs to be clear where you are, with this game it needs to be clear where everybody is. That's one reason it's not been done for quite a while in the UK. Also using film it was just a chore. However with dslr cameras it is trivial by comparison (apart from the weather element of course.) but there is still no guarantee of success. However you still might get some really nice meteor pictures of your own though

A "standard" lens is preferable. Although the field of view is smaller, the larger physical aperture generally catches more meteors. They look quite faint but there are more of them. This would be a 50mm f1.8 on a full frame camera of either a 28mm or 35mm on a smaller chipped camera.
Several of the others, as I will myself, be using 28mm f2.8 lenses from older cameras with a lens adapter on a variety of Canon cameras.
The exposure and iso depend on local conditions but the exposures should be started at the beginning of each minute or half minute so that everybody has their shutters open at the same time.

If all this doesn't put you off then I'll try an fit you in with the other observers to see if any are close enough to try working with.

Cheers,
Bill.

[BillW]

Hi All,

Carrying on from my edit on the first post of this thread...

On the subject of the DSLR multi station Perseid project, there are now 14 observers planning on taking part. :-)

I hope the weather gods are kind to us!

cheers,
Bill.