This is a video of an April Lyrids meteor captured on 24 April 2023 using my Sony ZV-E10 with Rokinon 20mm t/1.9 lens at 01:05 CDT (06:05 UTC) in Everman, Texas. Video was shot in true 4K using 24p 60M. The video shows the full size image at normal speed, then shows a cropped in view at normal speed, then finally shows a cropped in view at 1/10th speed so you can see how the meteor flares multiple times and understand how that will look when captured within a long, still image photo.
I have to admit I love a challenge. I shoot in Bortle 8 sky with a lot of light pollution, so it is even more challenging than in dark sky. I built a rig to capture both video and photos at the same time. I used a Sony ZV-E10 with Rokinon 20mm t/1.9 lens for video and a Sony a7 with FE 28mm f/2 for time lapse photos.
Nice catch Jack! That's a better Lyrid than I've been able to catch so far, but almost every night around peak has been almost completely clouded out, so I was not able to get the time when it mattered.
If did clear up last night however, and I have some potential catches (probably not Lyrids), but have yet to go through footage (probably later tonight).
We have been very cloudy for well over a year now as the climate continues to change. We still don't get much rain, perhaps 35" per year, but it is almost always cloudy now. We get a lot of Pacific storm systems coming off the west coast from California, and they are flooding over there this spring. Plus we get a steady stream of moister pumping in from the Gulf of Mexico. The night of April 23-24 was the only real opening in the clouds and it was clear, more or less, for only about 2 hours. I captured this Lyrids about 01:05 CDT (06:05 UDT). I missed the peak night altogether because of clouds.
I'm starting to get into the groove with the Sony ZV-E10 but still have a lot to learn about shooting night sky video. I shot this at 24p 60M using 1/25th sec shutter, the aperture was set wide open at t/1.9 (I was using a Rokinon 20mm t/1.9 video lens), and ISO was set at 16,000. The Sony ZV-E10 doesn't have the big pixels of the a7s III or new Sony ZV-E1, so I have to turn up the ISO more. I wish I had the new Sony ZV-E1 so I could shoot at a higher frame rate. If I shoot at 30p it crops the FoV by 1.23x, so I stick with 24p. I mostly have invested in FF lenses for AP, so I need to get a good APS-C 16mm f/1.4 for the Sony ZV-E10 so I can get a wider FoV with decent light. I've got a Rokinon 12mm f/2 APS-C lens which is sharp, but it doesn't let much light in. It works well for long exposures, but not that well for AP video.
Sounds very similar to what is the new normal here. We get a "conveyor belt" of depressions that head in from the Atlantic, depending on what the Jet Stream is doing. When the Jet Stream gets stuck, which can be for months (like the end of January till now this year), we are lucky to see one clear night a week!
24p doesn't look too bad I must say. Given the smaller pixels it's probably not a bad thing.
It's all "imaging meteors" to me now, just short exposures or long exposures. I was just thinking about it: For most astro photography you benefit from being able to accumulate light over time, but since meteors are moving subjects that is not the case with them, so if anything they (and perhaps some other transient phenomena) are actually better suited to short exposure imaging!
I see you are off to a flying start with resolve too. There are plenty of helpful tutorials out there. What I'm not looking forward to is putting together a short documentary (something I want to do), but small clips are fairly easy. Another 64 GB or RAM arrived today for my recently built editing PC which is another step towards me doing that. I didn't want it so soon, but got a price drop alert which I could not resist taking advantage of. After that and two big whites (not forgetting the bits to go with them, including a used 7D II) in less than a month, I should curb my spending! At least I now have pretty much every focal length covered!
30p looks better but that 1.23 crop on a lens made for FF makes my FOV too small. On an APS-C UWA lens like the 12mm it is okay, except 12mm at f/2 is not allowing in much light. 12mm at 1.23 crop works out to approximately 15mm on APS-C and FF eq. of 22mm which is okay. However too dark at f/2 except for brighter meteors. A 16mm at f/1.4 will be about the same FOV but let in almost 4x more light. So for now I will shoot longer, brighter lenses until I can get the Sigma 16mm f/1.4.
I have DaVinci Resolve 18 installed and need to start learning it. I used iMovie to create this video, but D R will allow much better editing options.
Interestingly enough when you compare the dimness of the meteor track in the 15 sec photo to that in the slow motion video, the photo makes the meteor look dimmer than Spica but the video frames make it look brighter than Spica, way brighter. So you might be on to something. This meteor lasted about 1.3 sec. The 15 sec exposure allows Spica and friends to gather a lot of light, but the short duration of the meteor at only 1.3 sec doesn’t get the opportunity to gather nearly as much light. Even if the meteor is mag 1 and a star is also mag 1, the star will look brighter because it pumps out mag 1 for 15 sec but the meteor is only in a single frame for 1/25th sec. Granted I suspect that there is some overlapping over multiple frames, but it will still be rather dim in the final photo. In the video, every frame is only 1/25th sec so the meteor and Spica only expose for that brief amount of time allowing the meteor to look brighter in each frame, but in the photo Spica gets 15 sec to gather light so it looks brighter. I’m going to separate out all 32 frames which include a portion of the meteor and stack them in order to compare it to the image in the photo. I’ll post the results.
I imported into Photoshop a short version of my video containing just the meteor frames. I then had PS extract all the frames as 16-bit TIFFs and cropped out everything in each frame except the meteor. That was time consuming! I then stacked those frames over a duplicate of one of the frames that contained the background and I got a brighter trail than the 15 sec photo showed. Unfortunately there are portions between each frame that show black. I think this might just be that the camera used a tiny bit of time recording the frame and thus didn't capture the complete trail. So the result is a bit segmented.
[Edited to add:] It just dawned on me that my camera was shooting 24 fps but using the slightly faster 1/25th sec setting. I wonder if that very small difference can cause the one pixel breaks between the frames?[End of edit]
Overall I prefer the 15 sec photo view of the meteor, but the video view is definitely brighter and looks way more cool when it is watched in motion.
Makes sense to shoot longer brighter lenses till you get a 16/1.4. Although your chances of catching a complete event are reduced, it should look better when/if you do.
Regarding the differences in brightness. I'm thinking contrast might have a roll to play here. Just like when dim objects are observed from dark sky sites, they appear to be brighter.
I have been wanting to extract individual frames from footage, and wondered how to do so. I didn't realize Photoshop could do so, so thanks for mentioning it. I'll have to give it a try.
Very interesting to see your comparison between the 15s exposure and the stacked frames. It really jumps out how much brighter the meteor looks in the stack, but at the expense of background/star detail (and more crucially, light pollution). I think you just proved my point there regarding the benefits of shooting footage vs long exposure stills from light polluted sites Jack! :)
I took the extracted frames (images thereof) which I had meticulously edited to extract the meteor bits and decided there might be a better way, not to mention easier and much quicker, to get a trail of the meteor. Kind of puzzled why I didn’t do this the first time rather than editing nearly 40 frames.
I extracted the frames again and made sure I extracted enough frames to cover 18 seconds of elapsed time. I then loaded these into StarStaX and let it create a meteor trail. I use it for star trails, but it does well for meteor trails too. I used 18 seconds worth (about 430 frames) so that the stars would trail slightly and thus look bigger and better in the image. The video was shot 24 fps at ISO 16,000 so the stars were tiny. Any way, here is the StarStaX images.
BTW, I shot some video last night using the Sony ZV-E10 with a 12mm f/2 lens using 30fps at 60m at 1/30th sec, f/2, and ISO 32,000. The moon was very bright and in the FoV but I still captured several stars right around the moon, so I’m confident it should be able to capture brighter meteors. My guess, judging from stars captured, is it should capture mag. 3 and brighter meteors with ease. I’m going to try it out overnight and see if I get any. The eta Aquariids are currently active just before dawn.
Edited to Add: Shot video and time-lapse photos for nearly 6 hours overnight (Apr 30 - May 1). I didn’t capture anything though. If weather permits I’ll try again as the eta Aquariids peak approaches, but it looks like a lot of clouds are forecast.
If I've learned anything over the last few years, it's that a bright Moon attracts meteors, or so it seems!
We had a partly clear night last night for example, and low and behold one of the cameras catches a bright meteor, with bright Moon in the FOV. Analysis of the event from UKMON here. This one disintegrated soon after becoming visible, perhaps suggesting a "rubble pile" type asteroid origin.
Clear nights have continued to be few and far between, but it looks like there may be at least a couple of nights that are at least partly clear due over the next week. Fingers crossed the trend is now changing for the better - almost nothing but cloud so far this year.
PS. While typing this reply there is a large red bar at the top of the reply window, suggesting nearly all my upload space is used up, but I have not uploaded anything much that I can remember. Are you seeing similar by any chance Jack?
Thanks. A bit heavy, but it works. I’ve been experimenting using my little RX100 iii as the time lapse camera to lessen the weight. It does a decent job too.
I typically do mostly wider field night sky photography to capture star fields and meteors and similar things. As such I use my cameras with camera lenses. Occasionally I photograph DSO (deep sky objects) or the Sun or Moon which requires a telephoto camera lens or a telescope, but I use a telephoto camera lens. Many people prefer telescopes, but I've always preferred using camera lenses, especially for wider field photography.
