[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: (meteorobs) Meteor-Photography




Asaf, to put Ed Majden's comments into context: using a telescope to photograph
meteors would be a very frustrating business! Even with a wide-angle camera
looking straight at the sky, covering a field of view tens of degrees wide,
meteor photographers will often expose 20 or more hours of film for every meteor
they successfully catch on film... With the smaller field of view of your 70mm
f/5.6 (7o at most), the net is likely to be even smaller.

Also, the scientific value of any images you collect is the same with a scope as
it would be with a simple camera. (At least that's what I understand.) With a
camera though, as Ed suggests, you can place a "rotating shutter" (a weird
contraption based on an electric fan or other motor plus blades) in front of
your camera lens, so that any meteor which appears will be chopped into a
"dashed line" on film. This lets you measure angular speed!


However, one thing your 70mm f/5.6 WOULD be very well suited to is telescopic
meteor plotting! With a 6 or 7 degree FOV, and the proper Telescopic plot charts
(available from the IMO's Telescopic Committee coordinator Malcolm Currie), you
can provide extremely valuable data both on the complex radiants of visual
showers, and on showers which are generally so faint ("r" factor > 3) that they
can ONLY be properly visually observed with a telescope.

And a good pair of binoculars on a stable, flexible mount are just as good for
this purpose! To find out more about telescopic observing with either a rich
field scope or binoculars, contact Malcolm directly at:

            Malcolm Currie <tele@imodot net>

Clear skies!
Lew


To UNSUBSCRIBE from the 'meteorobs' email list, use the Web form at:
http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/subscribe.html

Follow-Ups: References: