Millions of Meteors + SOOC Meteors + Meteor Color Info

[JimFox]

On my way back from Colorado to California, I went by way of New Mexico, Arizona and then California. I managed to stop by in Sedona just as Jeffrey was meeting with Doug, so I had an hour or two to hang out with them by Red Rock Crossing before I left to go up to the Grand Canyon for my first night of the Perseid Meteor shower. I had a window of 4 or 5 hours in between clouds to capture them. After that is was on to Joshua Tree the next night to shoot the Perseids some more.

My choices for locations were based on clear skies, no smoke, and no excessive heat. It was 117 in Death Valley that day with a low of 90 at night. Joshua Tree was a high of 100 with a low of 76, so I went with it. Plus I had been toying with the idea of using Joshua Trees again for a foreground, so off I went.

This image was just one of over a 1000 I captured for a timelapse. It has the tail end of the Milky Way, not the core. But it showed up nicely with those dark skies. This was aimed to the North East where the majority of the meteors should be coming from.

In the end I had close to a 100 meteors I counted in my images, this image has almost 40 in it. Some are very very small, some are very large, and some inbetween.

I put all of the best ones in this image, I will go back later and remove some and see if I can have a little less chaotic night sky. Though the brightest and largest all radiate out nicely, so the few that are flying to their own beat, don't seem to stand out as badly as some years.

So I took a base image from the middle of the night with the tail of the Milky Way at the angle I wanted, and then in Photoshop I painstakingly blended in each meteor. The base image did have it's own singular meteor in it. I spent all day today with the blending, my eyes only crossed 4 times, so that is not too bad.

Nikon D810
Sigma 14mm f1.8
25 secs
ISO 1600
f2
(Exposure based on the histogram being 1/3rd from the left)

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Cool result - and it looks like complete nocturnal chaos in the skies.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Great meteor show Jim. I assume you used meteors from all 1000 images in one composite. If so, how do you move a meteor from one image to the other without getting the stars as well? Also why the colors in the meteors? I see red and green.

 

[Raymond]

Wow, amazing shot

 

[JimFox]

Cool result - and it looks like complete nocturnal chaos in the skies.

Thanks so much Alan!

 

[JimFox]

Great meteor show Jim. I assume you used meteors from all 1000 images in one composite. If so, how do you move a meteor from one image to the other without getting the stars as well? Also why the colors in the meteors? I see red and green.

It was a great show Ben!

As for the coloring of the Meteors, that's how the camera captured them. The majority of them had color, a few burned up so bright they were mainly white. When you see them by eye streak across the sky you can see the color in them. As you can see there were a few that really were awesome, large and so colorful. Some are green and red, some if you look close have every color of the rainbow in them.

Here is what I did Ben.

1. Go through all of the images and find the ones with Meteors. There was about 100 with Meteors.

2. Batch process all 100 images as tiff.

3. Go through those 100 and find the one I want to use as my Master (Base Image). One where I like the positioning of the Milky Way and it has a good Meteor in it all on it's own.

4. In Photoshop I take my Master Image, and then I open up the first Image with a Meteor and Layer it below the Master Image.

5. With a Layer Mask I then paint with a small paint brush (5px) at 100 Opacity so that the Meteor shows through. I zoom in to 200% when doing this and I scroll so that the Meteor is close to the right edge of the screen so I know where to start painting. I only want the Meteor and none of the stars of the image with the Meteor.

6. I flatten the layer, save it. So now I have the Master Image with 2 meteors in it.

7. Starting back at #4 and bring in the next Meteor image... etc, etc...

 

[JimFox]

Wow, amazing shot

I appreciate that Raymond!

 

[John Holbrook]

Very patient compositing with a beautiful image as a result.

 

[Ben Egbert]

It was a great show Ben!

As for the coloring of the Meteors, that's how the camera captured them. The majority of them had color, a few burned up so bright they were mainly white. When you see them by eye streak across the sky you can see the color in them. As you can see there were a few that really were awesome, large and so colorful. Some are green and red, some if you look close have every color of the rainbow in them.

Here is what I did Ben.

1. Go through all of the images and find the ones with Meteors. There was about 100 with Meteors.

2. Batch process all 100 images as tiff.

3. Go through those 100 and find the one I want to use as my Master (Base Image). One where I like the positioning of the Milky Way and it has a good Meteor in it all on it's own.

4. In Photoshop I take my Master Image, and then I open up the first Image with a Meteor and Layer it below the Master Image.

5. With a Layer Mask I then paint with a small paint brush (5px) at 100 Opacity so that the Meteor shows through. I zoom in to 200% when doing this and I scroll so that the Meteor is close to the right edge of the screen so I know where to start painting. I only want the Meteor and none of the stars of the image with the Meteor.

6. I flatten the layer, save it. So now I have the Master Image with 2 meteors in it.

7. Starting back at #4 and bring in the next Meteor image... etc, etc...

Wow, that's a lot of work. I did the same thing with the meteors in my recent MW, only I just brightened the ones I had, but I used the layer mask and painting in with a small brush. Doing this 100 times is really something. I was hoping that you had a faster way.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

A very nice result for the efforts - must have been a painstaking exercise to merge that many meteors into one image.

 

[JimFox]

Very patient compositing with a beautiful image as a result.

Thank you John! I like how it came out.

 

[JimFox]

Wow, that's a lot of work. I did the same thing with the meteors in my recent MW, only I just brightened the ones I had, but I used the layer mask and painting in with a small brush. Doing this 100 times is really something. I was hoping that you had a faster way.

You could stack them all with a layer mask and then align the images based on the stars, then use either Lighten or Difference for blend modes perhaps.

I do it this way so I can pick and choose for sure which meteors I want in the final image.

 

[JimFox]

A very nice result for the efforts - must have been a painstaking exercise to merge that many meteors into one image.

I spent all day yesterday doing that…

Thanks Jameel.

 

[Bob]

Jim,
Amazing composition. What causes the different colors in the meteors?
Why didn't you let me know that you were at red rock crossing I would have joined you and Doug.
Bob

 

[John Holbrook]

Jim,
You might want to experiment and try this method for compositing your meteors. See attached steps (1-7) below. Note particularly the blend mode changes in Layers and the added mask in white and then inverted to black. I apologize for the small text in Layers palette.

 

[Kyle Jones]

Great images you chose as a base and nice execution on the meteors. The colors do look strange to me, I've never seen that by eye or in images.

 

[JimFox]

Jim,
You might want to experiment and try this method for compositing your meteors. See attached steps (1-7) below. Note particularly the blend mode changes in Layers and the added mask in white and then inverted to black. I apologize for the small text in Layers palette.

View attachment 42146View attachment 42147View attachment 42148View attachment 42149View attachment 42150View attachment 42151View attachment 42152

Hey John, that's a great suggestion and a more productive way to blend in the meteors. My problem is I am a bit OCD, so I like not having 40 layers in my processing. So that's me. But for anyone reading this, it's the same end result, but this method is more productive as you can have more meteors in a saved photo. (depending on how often you backup while processing).

Thanks John!

 

[JimFox]

These 3 are straight out of the camera. No color correction, contrast, brightness, etc added. These are just 3 random ones I grabbed real quick. The colors were there in the meteors, at least for me, this is normally what I get when I capture meteors. If you guys aren't getting meteors captured like this, I am not sure why. As I said, some meteors were just white, but most were like these.

 

[JimFox]

As to Meteors having color, it's pretty normal.

Here is a quote, and then check out the link at the end.

"What a meteor is made out of is not the only factor that determines the color that it appears. The speed at which the meteor enters the Earth’s atmosphere can also affect the color.

The faster a meteor moves, the more intense the color may appear, according to the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

“Among fainter objects, it seems to be reported that slow meteors are red or orange, while fast meteors frequently have a blue color,” the AMS said.

The Geminid Meteor Shower, one of the best meteor showers of the year, is a shower known for producing intensely colored meteors, Samuhel said. The Geminids peak in mid-December.

The most common colors for this specific meteor shower are yellow, orange and sometimes green.

The Perseid Meteor Shower, another popular meteor shower that occurs every August, is also known for producing shooting stars that give off vivid colors."

Why do meteors glow in vibrant colors? | AccuWeather

 

[JimFox]

Jim,
Amazing composition. What causes the different colors in the meteors?
Why didn't you let me know that you were at red rock crossing I would have joined you and Doug.
Bob

Hey Bob, it was a last minute thing. I found that Jeffrey was meeting up with Doug, so I just met up with them. It would have been great to have you there.

We were actually in the flat area that can get the pools of water that is located above Red Red Crossing. The pools were dry despite the recent rains. I also didn't hang around, as my goal was to get to the Grand Canyon to shoot the Perseids.