Slashdot Mirror
The Lyrids Are Coming!
SeaDour writes "The year's first meteor shower, the Lyrids, will peak in the pre-dawn hours of April 22nd when the Earth plows through the debris trail of Comet Thatcher at a relative velocity of 49 km/s (110,000 mph). Lyrids usually aren't as numerous as other showers (such as the famed Leonids), but they're well-known for their spectacular tails; you can expect to see about 5-20 meteors per hour, depending on the severity of your local light pollution. Unfortunately, my current location in the midwest under stormy skies puts me at a bit of a disposition, but hopefully some other Slashdotters can share their observations with us tomorrow."
With most digital cameras you will get a lot of static in your image. I tried doing this with my Olympus C-3030 during the 2002 Leonoids, and my pictures turned out terrible -- more static than anything else.
As far as I know film is the way to go for long exposures.
(There's actually a way to eliminate at least some of the static if you're crafty with Photoshop -- the static tends to show up on the same pixels on you camera's CCD, so if you take one fully dark photo you can use it to substract the static in subsequent pictures).