I really need to brush up on my astronomy

I could not for the life of me find the north star. I had no problem finding ursa major, but for some reason, couldn't locate the ursa minor where the north star is located.

click on the image to see it in large size

North star is somewhere to the right of this frame.
Shortly after my camera finished processing this image, its battery died, otherwise I would've repositioned and tried again.

This exposure was about 13 minutes long, it's a little overexposed, I underestimated how much light there'd be.

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Perseid meteor shower

Tip - click on the photos for large images.

What's this? A meteor? But it looks so odd!

It's a plane.

I only saw one, albeit very brilliant, meteor. It streaked where I didn't expect it - right under the moon. The moon was pretty bright, plus I had the city lights to contend with. So I satisfied myself by taking pictures of the stars, something I hadn't done since my first photography class about 15 years ago. I'm probably dating myself here. Geesh.

Anyway. I had only a few minutes of exposure for these pictures. One downside to digital - it takes them awhile to process the image after I'm done taking a particular image and it's very boring standing there in the dark twiddling my thumbs waiting and waiting for it to greenlight so that I can take the next image.

I wasn't feeling patient tonight and was really tired, so I didn't want to take long exposures. Next time, I'll bring something to read and go nuts.

I must've jarred the camera slightly. There's a tiny bobble at the start of the star trails.

Of course, now I'm back home, I've got my third wind.

Not a stellar pic. har har, punny.

It's very disconcerting to be standing there in the dark, totally oblivious to anything nearby, then the camera's night light comes on for a split second - and I see a million bugs swarming around me.

Not bugs.

I'm still itchy at the thought of those bugs!

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