2017 Perseid Meteor Shower
Well the Perseid Meteor Shower was disappointing this year, about what I expected considering the nearly full moon. Clouds ruined any chance of getting decent shots will it was dark before the moon rose, plus the damn wind made it nearly impossible to get good focus. Don't know why I bother going out to the west desert of Utah to do imaging anymore, every time it's the same crap with the clouds and wind. At least the thunderstorms were cool, that's about the only reason to go out there. Decided to use just one camera this year to save myself some sanity with the editing, was hoping to get about 10-20 good meteors with a few fireballs. Only ended up getting about a half dozen meteors and one fireball. All well, next year should be better with the new moon phase. Right after the moon rose I captured all my foreground and sky shots, each being 1 minute exposures at ISO 400 and f2.8 shot with my Nikon D800E and Sigma Art 35mm lens on a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer tracking mount. After I got those exposures I just set up the intervalometer to take continuous exposures pointing due north, exposures were 20 seconds at ISO 800 and f1.4. I stitched the sky and foreground exposures separately and then blended them in Photoshop. With the "final" image I layered the shots with meteors (after aligning to where the image matched the base layer using some foreground markers) and then masked just the meteor onto the stitched/blended shot.
