shooting stars

after I we read about the Perseids meteor shower peaking on the 11th and 12th of August, I convinced her we decided to hike out to Alexandra Park, which is on a hill 10, 15mins from Bath city centre in the middle of the night to look for our first shooting star(s)!


to be honest, in our 11 months here, we have never ventured out of the comforts of our room after dark. which is not that hard since she sleeps around 8pm we are both 宅人s.


anyway, we don't have much time left here, and it's not often such a chance to witness meteor showers come along, so 鼓起勇气，勇往直前! (translation: drum up our courage, and bravely go forward)


it was alright until we reached the park, which was pitch black. so she turned out the flashlight on her phone and we charged forward slowly.


good thing was that we've been there before during the day, so we kinda knew what to look out for. and then i recognised this!

we sat there on a bench overlooking this for a while until we realised this was probably too bright to see stars, so we followed a very loud family who was lying on the ground somewhere behind us.


even without the shooting stars, the view was like nothing we've ever seen.

so many stars spread out in front of us.

wish i knew a thing or 2 about constellations.

we did see about 10 shooting stars, which was absolutely magical. but there was just no way anyone can make a wish on those things, cos they last for like a milli-second.

blink and you miss it.

some were awfully bright though.

after lugging my camera and tripod there and about 200,000 attempts later, this was the only shot i managed.

do you see it? maybe you have to click on the photo to see a larger version.
at least i think it is a shooting star.

it could have been a plane or some fast moving satellite for all i know. i only saw this while i was going through the photos.

those that we saw while lying there were much much brighter.


anyhow, there are a few things i've learnt, trying to photograph a shooting star. i mean the difficulties are not hard to imagine:

1. no idea where the stars are going to be shot from.
2. no telling when the stars are going to shot.
3. it's hard to adjust settings when everything is pitch black.

for some inexplicable reason, i actually tried to change to a lens with a larger aperture out there in the dark.
maybe thinking that another lens would change my luck. or something


and after fiddling around for 10 mins, the photos were all very very dark even after i set the shutter speed at 30 seconds with aperture of 1.4

about 10 photos later, i found out the problem.
i forgot to take the lens cap off.

genius.

even then, it turns out i had the focus all wrong on the second lens which i only discovered when i was looking through the photos just now. so the photos were all rubbish.

in my defence, the photos didnt look as blur on the smaller camera LCD. =X

oh well, better to make all these mistakes now than in September when we are going to (hopefully) see the aurora!!