Perseids, After Hours

[P3D KENNETH LUKER <KLUKER@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm very groggy this morning because I spent the entire night five 
miles south of the Great Salt Lake photographing the Perseid Meteor 
Shower in stereo.  I don't have the results yet, but I believe they 
will not be favorable.  The stereo setup was fine, I believe:  My  
son Adam and I were separated by just under two miles to give a base 
of about one-thirtieth the distance to the 60-mile high meteors.  We 
aimed the two cameras so that Alpheratz was centered side-to-side and 
slightly above center vertically.  We synchronized our watches so 
that we could squeeze the two cable releases at about the same time.  
We were using 28 mm lenses so we could capture a broader portion of 
the sky than we got last year with 50 mm lenses (last year I got part 
of one meteor in one shot, Adam got none.)  Beginning at 1:05 a.m. we 
shot simultaneous shots on 36-exposure Kodacolor Royal Gold 400 film, 
pressing the cable release on the five-minute mark, exposing for one 
minute, then waiting four minutes for the next shot.  

Problem:  The dozens of meteors we saw almost all occured during the 
eighty-percent of the time when the shutters were closed.  Those that 
came during the twenty-percent of the time the shutters were open 
were mostly all over the sky except where our cameras were pointed.  
You pays your money and takes yer choice when pointing at potential 
meteor places!  We were aiming about fifteen or twenty degrees south 
of the radient in Perseus.  Had we been aiming twenty degrees 
northeast of the radiant, we would have had some great successes!  

Problem:  I should have followed my intuition and changed the battery 
in my Minolta BEFORE the session.  I had had no failures on these 
batteries yet, so I thought they would probably last through the 
session.  The batteries failed on the third shot (the camera went 
dead) so I missed one five-minute sequence while I changed batteries.

Problem:  The clouds in the east were illuminated by lights from Salt 
Lake City, across the Oquirrh mountain range, and probably outshone 
the meteors.  They also obscured some of the meteors, but were thin 
enough that we could see the meteors through the clouds.  I think we 
should have pointed northwest--the sky seemed darker there, with no 
clouds, mostly.  But at times during the night, the sky was almost 
perfectly cloudless.

Problem:  Around 4:30 a.m. I was getting cold and I realized we 
probably didn't have any good stereo pairs yet, so I drove the two 
miles to tell Adam to change the protocol:  We'd open the lens for 
2.5 minutes then wait for 2.5 minutes, so we would be SURE to get 
some shooting stars, even at the cost of having the fixed stars 
create trails because of the stationary cameras.  That excursion 
caused us to miss two paired exposures.  Walky talkies would have 
been a good tool.

Problem:  During the second of the longer exposures, a beautiful 
meteor shot down exactly mid-view, and I cheered, knowing we had a 
success at last.  But as I took down the camera at five a.m. I 
noticed that at some time during the night the low temperature and 
the moist pasture had combined to put a heavy coat of dew all over my 
lens--I have no idea when it came, but I'm certain it was before that 
great shot!

I'll get the rolls developed and contact-sheet printed tonight, and 
then spend some time planning for next year.  I think I know what 
I'll change.  My night in the pasture was contemplative and serene, 
and cost me only a few hours of sleep, so I feel somewhat 
compensated, even if there are no stereo meteor shots.  It was less 
expensive than a trip to Greece.

Ken Luker
_______________________________________________________________
Kenneth Luker
Marriott Library Systems and Technical Services
KLUKER@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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