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Taurid Meteor Over Topaz Lake

The North and South Taurid meteor showers aren't the most prolific meteor showers of the year, but the meteors which do show up can include bright fireballs.  Five days ago I passed on the tip that the Taurid shower was expected to be more active than usual this year, and I put a camera out one night to see for myself.  Although I missed the forecasted peak night for the shower, I did catch this one very long, bright meteor within view of my 14mm lens.  It's passing through Orion in this photo, and Taurus is just above.  I caught another bright meteor in the lower left corner of the frame a short while later, and that appears to be an early meteor from the overlapping Leonid shower underway, peaking Sunday night/Monday morning.

Taurid Meteor Shower

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36 thoughts on “Taurid Meteor Over Topaz Lake”

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  2. It's actually quite easy to capture meteors in photos +James Black and +Arihant Jain.  I use an external timer (intervalometer) to capture hundreds of 30 second exposures over the course of several hours, as described in my blog entry "Producing Milky Way Images":
    http://activesole.blogspot.com/search?q=Milky+Way
    So I use a lens with a very wide focal length to see a lot of the sky, and the camera's shutter is open most of the night, so many of the meteors are captured in photos.  I can even put those hundreds of photos together to make time-lapse movies from them: 
    Perseid Meteor Shower
    http://youtu.be/vroLnrBhbmk?hd=1
    (Best viewed 720p quality, full screen.)

  3. Good question +Arihant Jain, the apparent movement is reduced by using an ultra-wide lens.  I used a 14mm lens in this case, but I also use a 16mm lens with very little apparent movement in the stars in 30 seconds.  My 24mm lens shows more movement, but it's f/1.4, so the equivalent  exposure I'd have at 30 seconds at f/2.8 I can get with 15 seconds at f/2, or on a crop sensor camera I sometimes go all the way wide open at f/1.4.

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