Leonids 2005
Part 1
This years Leonids was never billed as a big event, so instead of going to a rural location to view the shower, I decided to stay at home and test the D70 connected to the laptop, and see if I could catch a fireball or two over London! I had been trying for a Taurid fireball whenever there was a clear night since late October anyway, and despite the weather cooperating for the most part, failed to record any bright Taurids (or even see one for that matter!), although I did manage to bag a late Orionid instead!
In the past, I had always discounted trying to photograph meteors in such a light polluted area, but since getting the D70, and having done a little experimentation with it, I am happy to say that because of the instant feedback the camera gives me, it's easy enough to tell exactly where the sky-fog limit is, and correct the exposure length to suit the current situation. The main limitation is that even on a clear night, the correct exposure is never really long enough to get any star detail (at least with a wide angle lens, and shooting low on the horizon - but that is no surprise). For post-processing, just a little adjustment of the red curve in Photoshop is enough to get rid of most of the orange caused by the street lighting. Apart from that, all I have done is resize/crop and sharpen the images you see below.
The full moon this year hampered visual observations, and reduced the contrast of photographs taken with it high in the sky, but not as badly as I was expecting, so despite the moon crossing right through the camera's FOV during the night, I ran it through the night from just after dark till dawn, on the night of the 17/18 and the 18/19 of November.
Best Leonid (out of 3) caught early in the morning of the 18th.
100% crop of the above photo
I think I was looking in the other direction when the Leonid in the photo above occurred. I only saw 3, and 3 more were photographed, but only this one is worth showing due to the terminal burst (perhaps -2 or -3) at the end. The other two were faint and barely visible! Unfortunately, when I came to the end of the night, and I looked to see the files I had accumulated over the night, I discovered I had been shooting in "Jpeg" rather than "RAW" mode - a shame since the image would have been much easier to enhance if it had been captured in RAW mode!
Date/Time: 18th November 2005
Location: West London, UK 518E 179N
Camera: Nikon D70
Camera Mode: Shooting in Time-lapse mode (Nikon Capture Software) - Tethered to a laptop - Jpeg (Large/Normal)
Exposure: 13 Seconds
ISO: 200
Lens: Nikkor 14/2.8 @ 2.8 (Effective angle of view on D70 21 degrees?)
Best Leonid (out of 2) caught early in the morning of the 19th.
100% crop of the above photo
Enhanced version of the above crop (Photoshopped to bring out a bit more color)
The Leonid in the photo above is the only one I saw on the night of the 19th/20th, which was also caught by the camera. Only the terminal flare which was around -1 mag. caught my eye, otherwise I probably would have completely missed it!
Date/Time: 19th November 2005
Location: West London, UK 518E 179N
Camera: Nikon D70
Camera Mode: Shooting in Time-lapse mode (Nikon Capture Software) - Tethered to a laptop - RAW
Exposure: 13 Seconds
ISO: 200
Lens: Nikkor 14/2.8 @ 2.8 (Effective angle of view on D70 21 degrees?)
Part 2
Best Leonid from the morning of the 20th.
100% crop of the above photo
Date/Time: 20th November 2005
Location: West London, UK 518E 179N
Camera: Nikon D70
Camera Mode: Shooting in Time-lapse mode (Nikon Capture Software) - Tethered to a laptop - RAW
Exposure: 13 Seconds
ISO: 200
Lens: Nikkor 14/2.8 @ 2.8 (Effective angle of view on D70 21 degrees?)
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All images (C) Leo Stachowicz 1999-2005
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