Geminid Meteor Shower

- December 15, 2014

10 Days till Christmas

Correction (01/03/2018)

Most of these photos are of aircraft

The Geminids and the Quadrantids are the only meteor showers NOT originating from a comet. They are babies in the meteor shower family, only appearing since 1862. It is a great display and I caught a few on camera.

I wasn't too sure how well the camera would hold up in the cold before the lens would frost over or the battery would quit so I only took a sequence of 117 photos.

I shot these with a 20mm Lumix lens which is equivalent in 35mm terms to a 40mm. Not exactly wide angle but the fastest lens I have. I chose a shutter speed of 30 seconds with a 8 second gap between shots. ISO was set at 400 which was the best quality I thought I could choose for a night sky.

My neighbors Christmas lights gave me a subject for manually setting focus because this lens like so many other digital lens does NOT have an infinity marking (why not?).

I hope everyone got a chance to see a few of these, it was a great show and we are BLESSED to have less light pollution than most places. I love dark skies.

I was just setting up the camera when this zipped by. I didn't see it but the camera did

Later I had the camera pointed directly overhead and caught this small one

This meteor appeared to be red which I've never seen before. I have seen very bright green streaks before. Must have been made of iron

I like this shot, not sure about the double streak, might be an artifact of the filter on the lena, next time I'll remove it.

There will be a next time, meteor showers are the best

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