Celestial Rain

Happy New Year to everyone here at NPN! Sorry for my lack of participation lately, the holidays are always a busy time for me!

Last night was the Quadrantid Meteor Shower, the first shower of the new year, so I dusted off my camera and headed out in the wee hours of the morning to try and capture something. Temps were below zero but the sky put on such a show I stayed and watched it for four hours. I counted nearly 60 meteors during that time, including this one shooting through the milky way galaxy. I am confident that number would have been much higher but I was to busy searching for different compositions and making exposures to watch the sky the entire time. Such a wonderful night to be out under the stars, and one I definitely won't forget anytime soon.

This image is a blend of five exposures to overcome various technical limitations of the camera and lens; three for DOF @ f/2.8, one for the sky with the meteor, and one for the water and distant landscape. The first image that I made was a 74 sec. exposure @ ISO 800 for the water and distant mountains. The sky shot with the meteor was taken using a 25 sec. exposure @ ISO 1250. Considering the vast amount of meteors shooting through the sky they seemed to be avoiding my target area which was the northeastern sky near the Big Dipper. This was where a majority of the Quadrantids were supposed to radiate from. After a considerable amount of time (and patience) I finally got a bright meteor to shoot through the frame about an hour and a half before dawn. Once I had an acceptable meteor I took the three remaining exposures for DOF, all shot at 30 Sec. @ ISO 1250 (I would have used a lower iso and longer exposure here but my cable release froze up and stopped working). The light on the foreground comes from a house on the opposite side of the river. I would have liked to get farther out onto the ice but decided against it due to the fast moving current.

Thanks for taking the time to look and for any comments or critiques you may have!

Check out my latest Blog post to read more about the making of this image here: Quadrantid Meteor Shower Kicks off the New Year with Impressive Display!