Smoky Mts Day 1 - Milky Way over Townsend and the Smokies.

Well, was drinking wine on the balcony of the cabin. Could see the Milky Way. Thought I would give it a shot, and this is what I got.

Burgess Falls (or not)

Well, hell. It was a very sunny day, I was there around 2pm, and there were very harsh shadows. So, I am not putting any falls shots up. I did however, get an interesting mushroom shot with the iphone. That's all you get.

Winding Stairs, TN

Just a little bit of Three Springs Falls

Nice Sky

Well, normally wouldn't think I would be taking photos of the Corvette Museum, but the sky was very nice. Was driving home on the interstate. Very very nice sky. Needed to find a spot, and fast.
Had a camera with me - good Tom, but no tripod - bad Tom. These are high iso hand held shots... With lots of noise reduction applied in post. Didn't boost the saturation at all. Night shots just do that.
So, officially, I was shooting the sky. The museum was just an ob-stack-le in my path.

76 Falls on Lake Cumberland, and a Heron (of course).

Another easy hike in the park, and lunch.

Still taking it easy on the knee.
Nothing great (again).
Just a few shots along the way.

Lunch

Easy hikes.

Still working out a knee injury - bummer.
Took some short, easy hikes Saturday and Sunday in the park.
Went to a few places I have never been before.
Got a little wet.
Nothing fantastic, but here you go.
Three Springs Pump House.

Milky Way

Went for star trails. Liked Milky Way better. The bottom shot is one hour of 30 second shots merged together. The first shot is just one of the 30 second shots. Thirty seconds is a little long as you can easily see that the stars are small arcs. There was a plane or two that flew by during the hour. Oh, and yes, the Milky Way shot has had the crap processed out of it. There.

Heron of the month club.

Nuffsed.

Cavers

Birds and mushrooms on Shanty Hollow Lake. Update: Double-crested Cormorants, maybe?

Not sure what these birds are. I assume some sort of duck. I saw one flying, and watched it land in a tree. Followed it, and there was another. After some googling, they may be Double-crested Cormorants. That would not have been my first guess.

Was hoping the heron would pull out a fish, but not this time.

The token overly-processed Shanty Hollow moon shot.

I wasn't a slug.

The persids, according to what I had read, were supposed to be pretty good this year. Now I think that really referred to the moon being out of the way.

Anyway, usually I am a slug and don't get out during the meteor showers. This time, I was still up and wide awake, and the sky was clear, so I headed out to Shanty Hollow Lake about midnight. Actually got there at 12:30am or so.

I stayed until 3am, as from what I had read, the shower would get better the closer it got to dawn. I actually saw more in the 1 am range than I did closer to 3 am. All together I saw 6 or 7 meteors, which I don't think is a lot considering I was there two and a half hours.

I did get a few meteors on camera, small streaks, but I did get a few.  So mission accomplished I suppose.

I had two cameras going continuously, shooting a 30 second exposure, then immediately firing off again. One camera fogged up eventually, the other didn't. Go figure.

For the star trails, I ran them through photoshop to merge the photos together. White balanced on the blue side. As is not unusual, I processed them pretty heavily.

Caught Polaris on a few of these, and it was nearby on the others - nice. The bottom line is, I'm glad I did make the trip.

So, here are mostly star trails with the occasional meteor thrown in. I need a much wider lens if I hope to get some good meteor shower shots.

70min or so

Meteor up top left.

Polaris is stationary, all other stars rotate around it.
Meteor mid left going off screen.
15 min exposure (30, 30s exposures).

Meteor up top, left. 15 min exposure (30, 30s exposures).