I felt like an idiot not realizing there was a meteor shower this night until about 8pm while at work. No big deal though, I’d have plenty of time to run home after work to grab my camera, and head out east somewhere to attempt photographing it. Usually the peak of these showers wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning. But then I found out that the peak was supposed to be at 11:30pm. Uh oh. I wasn’t going to get off work until 11 which meant I would likely miss the show. Fortunately my boss let me leave 30 minutes early so I wouldn’t miss it.
I got home, grabbed my gear and headed out east in hopes that the faint cloud cover that was draped over the city would be gone. I went to my usual night time spot near Watkins and by the time I pulled up, the clouds were gone and the sky was crystal clear. It was just shy of 11:30 so I set my tripod up, and aimed to the northeast. I was using a new piece of software to control my camera from my laptop called DSLR Remote Pro. I threw my camera into bulb mode, and set the software to take 70 ten second exposures.
So, I was set up and the camera was firing away right at 11:30 but I still hadn’t seen any actual meteors yet. I knew that it wasn’t supposed to be an apocalypse of fireballs screaming across the sky but I’d figured I would’ve seen something by that point. Finally after about 30 minutes I saw one. And it was quick too, lasting no longer than a second. And of course it was just out of frame of where my camera was pointed. I re-adjusted and started firing shots again. I only ended up seeing a few more after that and by 1:30am I decided to call it a night. Overall, not a very exciting event but it was nice to try out some new software which worked splendidly. Below is the one and only (out of 270) shot that actually captured a meteor. Also I decided to at least stack my other images for a star trail which came out pretty well.
Thanks to my boss for letting me leave early to grab my camera! I know there’s a good chance he’ll read this so I figure I better give him a shout out, especially when he hears the favor I’m going to ask for on Thursday haha! With that said, Thursday looks like it’s shaping into a good chase day in northeast Colorado. I hope to be out for it.
2012 Chase Statistics:
Total Mileage This Chase: 52
Total 2012 Chase Mileage: 3,428
Milestones This Chase: First successful photo capture of meteor and first good startrail photo
Album of the Chase: ‘The Engine EP’ – Black Asteroid