[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

I set up my 400D doing 30s exposures every 34 seconds, F3.5, ISO 800, fully wide ( 18mm*1.6 so 29mm equiv ) when I went to bed - it took 247 exposures looking east, from 0027 to 0257 before the battery packed up in the cold of the conservatory. I figure I was capturing 88% of that period of time on film...a total of 132 minutes of exposed time. They're great images...you can watch Leo slowly rising - M44 is very visible - getting stars down to 7, 7.5, maybe 8. Not the ideal pointing, but the best I could do from the conservatory given that I wanted to keep everything inside....a few banks of light cloud popped through every now and again, but overall, I'm fairly sure any Leonid that I would have noticed by eye I would have seen on 'film'.. I know I didn't 'get' the peak....but even 5 per hour would have seen me get a couple at least...

I have ONE streak on film....and it's not a Leonid.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/IMG_0107.jpg ( scaled to 50% )

I think the Lion had a night off, and I know Stu didn't fair much better in Kendal.

Doug

[MizarKey]

This is exactly why I don't get excited about meteor showers.

I don't even remember which shower it was, but it was one of those that 'peaks' every 66 years or something and was predicted to peak like it only does every few hundred years. I live in a valley and the valley was completely fogged in. Just after midnight I drove 15 miles in thick fog to the nearby foothills, but the height wasn't quite enough. So I drove another 5 miles and finally got high enough to see clear sky. Despite wearing several layers of clothing I still froze my a$$ off while treated to a paltry 20 meteors in an hour.

Never again! I'd rather be delighted by the occasional sighting serendipitously than to actually plan to see something that doesn't manifest.