Subtitle: The annual Perseid meteor shower was this weekend, it was supposed to be clear at night, and I actually knew about it <i>before</i> the event.  So I decided I'd try to get some pictures of it.  As it turns out, I only got pictures of stars, but I saw a few meteors or shooting stars.

DSC_5046-header: Saturday, August 10, 2013
DSC_5046-headertext: On Saturday night, Bez, Shoshe, Rob, and I sat in Bez and Shoshe's back yard, near route 79, and star gazed.  We saw a few shooting stars and got some pictures.  It was after midnight and eventually we got cold, clouds started to come in, and things got wet with dew.  Shoshe was impressed that she could see the Milky Way from her back yard.  These pictures were all taken with my prime (fixed) 50mm lens (effectively a 75mm lens on a 35mm camera).  Most of the shots were taken using a 20-30 second exposure.

DSC_5046: Silhouette of a tree form the backyard plus stars.
DSC_5047: Some Milky Way action above the tree.
DSC_5048:  
DSC_5049: Trees and stars.
DSC_5050:  
DSC_5051:  
DSC_5052: Some clouds in the distance, just above the trees.
DSC_5053: More wispy, ghost-like clouds.
DSC_5054: With an exposure of around 20-25 second, some motion of the stars becomes visible.
DSC_5055:  
DSC_5056:  
DSC_5057: A nice space background, suitable for Star Trek or later photoshop use.
DSC_5058:  
DSC_5059: More star motion blurring.
DSC_5060: Looks much better as a thumbnail.

DSC_5062-header: Sunday, August 11, 2013
DSC_5062-headertext: Since I wasn't that happy with the pictures from Saturday, and I noticed the weather forecast for Sunday has changed to clear skies, I decided I'd go out on my own to see what I could see (and photograph what I could photograph).  I left around 10:30pm and decided I'd go up to Mt. Pleasant because it's relatively close, somewhat up (hence the "Mt." in the name), having little besides farms there probably has limited light pollution and somewhat open views of the skies, and, hell, it <i>must</i> be pretty nice otherwise it wouldn't have "pleasant" in its name.  <br/><br/>I saw a few cars pulled off to the side of the road, but there were 3 behind me, so I kept on driving.  The next time I saw a few pulled over, I pulled in behind them.  I could hear people around and such and there was a small building off to the side.  There was little traffic on the road after that.  I took some pictures there.  Then after seeing some people coming and going from the small building in the field, I discovered it was the Cornell observatory , and people were there.  They don't announce when it's open, but they're happy to show people stuff, which included Neptune and a planetary nebula.  Neat.<br/><br/>I took more pictures of the stars with varying degrees of success.  Some look nice as small images. Most are somewhat blurry at screen resolution, and all are really noisy at high resolution.  These were taken with my 16-85mm zoom lens, most at the 16mm setting, with around 10-15 second exposure time.  I had the ISO set high, 3200 for some and "HI" for others (8000 for the trees at the end).  It's possible some agressive use of Photoshop and filters might be able to clean it up a little.  Not sure.

DSC_5062: Not a shooting star, but a plane, on approach to Runway 32 at Ithaca.
DSC_5065: Milky Way action (noisy).
DSC_5066: The Cornell Observatory.
DSC_5068: 
DSC_5069: 
DSC_5070: OK, this one <i>might</i> actually have a shooting star in it.  Look at the bigger view and there's a streak just to the left of the center going up and down.  Didn't see it when I took the picture, but it seems like some sort of, er, thing.  This was the only one that was not at a wide angle, it was around 70mm (around 100mm for a 35mm camera).
DSC_5071: Nice thumbnail; the bigger versions look noisy.
DSC_5073: 
DSC_5074: 
DSC_5075: A lone tree under the stars on Mt. Pleasant.
DSC_5077: The telescope at the Cornell Observatory on Mt. Pleasant.
DSC_5079: Someone cranking the door to the dome shut, once the clouds rolled in.