Meteor Shower

It was called the May Camelopardalid meteor shower, and some astronomers were forecasting a big show!  I've wanted to do some star-field shooting for a while, so I decided on the day before the event to try photographing the fireworks.  The weather was cooperating nicely, with mostly clear skies predicted during the peak period of the meteor shower.  Unfortunately, the light pollution is pretty bad in my area of central Maryland.  So my plan was to drive west toward the relatively unpopulated thin neck of western Maryland, find a good dark spot to set up the tripod, and shoot me some shooting stars.

It took me quite a while to find a decent spot to set up-- one with a good, relatively unobstructed view of the sky, few lights on the ground, and the smallest possible chance of encountering a hungry bear.  After driving around tiny back roads for several hours, I finally found a fairly good spot near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, about 15 miles west of Hancock, Maryland.  Note to self for next time-- scout out shooting locations in advance, and in daylight!

The forecasted peak period of the meteor shower was from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM.  I arrived at my selected spot around midnight.  After trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to take a nap in my car, I got moving and set up my camera in time to start my 30-second exposures right around 2:00 AM.

Although the sky initially seemed pretty doggoned dark to this creature of suburbia, I could see after letting my eyes adjust for a few minutes that there was still significant light pollution along most of the horizon.  But there was nothing I could do about that, of course.  Here's one of the photos I took early on, facing directly north.

You can see the trail of one shooting star in this photo.  Also, you'll find the familiar Big Dipper on the left, along with a hint of Milky Way on the right.

Over the course of the next hour or so, I saw... well actually, not too many meteors at all.  In fact, the photo above is just about the most shooting-star-iest photo of the whole night!  It was definitely not a big-time meteor shower, but the stars were pretty, the evening was quiet, and I was enjoying communing with the night.

The meteors were forecast to originate from the north, but after a while, I decided to add a little variety and take a few photographs of the southern sky.  The Milky Way looked spectacular!

 Eventually I remembered a tip I had read and set the camera on continuous shooting (of 30-second exposures) and let it go for about half an hour.  Once I got home, I was able to piece all those exposures into a short video clip of the stars rotating around Polaris (higher-res version of this clip HERE).

After returning from this excursion, I discovered that the bright streak near the end of this clip is the International Space Station!

All in all, I had a fun time photographing the night sky.  Next time I will try to find a place a little darker still!

Sunrise at Ingonish

I took this photo on July 8, 2013 while on vacation with my family in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Ingonish is a beach town on beautiful Cape Breton Island, where my wife was born.  She has fond memories of this beach!  In the upper left is the Keltic Lodge resort, with beautiful views of the rocky Cape Breton shoreline.

I've wanted to take a photo like this for a while, and this vacation seemed like a good opportunity to give it a try.  To capture this image, I used a neutral-density filter and the lowest ISO setting on my camera.  That allowed me to use a nice, slow shutter speed of 14 seconds.