The Perseid meteor shower, one of the brighter meteor showers of the year, occurs every year between July 17 and August 24. The shower tends to peak around August 9-13.
The 2017 Perseids peaked on the night of August 12 and early morning hours of August 13. I was a little bit late to the party and decided to capture star trails on night from August 13 to August 14.
What was meant to be a star trail photography, actually turned out a lovely time lapse video.
I'm not an expert in astro photography, in fact I've done just one star trail photography before, see: My first star trail photography, a year ago. This year I was prepared technically better, if previous year I did all long exposures manually by pressing shutter release button after each 30 sec exposure, then for this year I had bought - intervalometer - a must have tool for astro photography or time lapse.
Once It was all setup, I decided to stick with largest aperture 3.5, ISO 800 and 20 sec exposure. In total I made 3 different scenes at our rural country house, see: home remodeling
Star Trails 2017
60 20 sec long exposures, aperture 3,5, ISO 800. There is one Perseid meteor visible here (in the middle)
Star Trails 2017
60 20 sec long exposures, aperture 3,5, ISO 800. This was a little bit complicated as clouds appeared. When post processing in Adobe Photoshop removed some 30 images. the result is strange, but still cool. By the way, a year ago at this place I made The Big Dipper photography
Star Trails 2017
40 20 sec long exposures, aperture 3,5, ISO 800. No meteors here, just star trails, but pretty cool effect with our pond in foreground.
For making start trail photography I used Adobe Photoshop - > File - Scripts - > Import Stack - once imported all layers, changed blending mode to Lighten and flattened image. Very easy.
For time lapse video, I ended up purchasing a neat time lapse editor timelapsetool.com by paying EUR 39 + VAT. Pretty high fee for a one time lapse video. But I'm sure I will make more time lapse videos this year, so I look on this as a good investment for my digital photography school project.
