Hi lamp friends! As usual, lots of pics, so to keep the thread coherent, please wait until everything is posted to comment. Thanks! A couple weeks ago, Earth passed through the debris field of the 209P/LINEAR comet for the first time. It was Earth's first viewing of the Camelopardalids meteor shower, and with hundreds of meteors per hour predicted, astronomers said the potential was pretty high for an exciting show. Since North America was the prime viewing spot, my partner and I headed down to my grandfather's farm, where there's less light pollution than in the city. You can read a daylight post about the farm over HERE at CCS. My partner read up on night sky photography, and since the winter wheat was tall, we brought along one of his Tilley FL6 floodlamps to light up the crops for some dramatic shots. He likes the lamps, and I like the stoves, so I give him most of the lamps in our collection, and he doesn't complain when another stove arrives in the mail. He's a keeper. This FL6 was his Valentine's Day gift a few months ago, and the fount is undated, so I'd guess early 50's. I picked it up earlier this year near Raleigh, NC from an amateur astronomer, who designed and built this fantastic observatory in his backyard. Cool huh?! The fella I bought it from was a super nice guy, and he also designs and builds huge remote control airplanes. When I went to pick it up, we spent the better part of an afternoon just hanging out and talking. Don't you love when that happens? Anyway the floodlight had been sitting for at least a decade, but with an FL6 kit from Ross at Ye Olde Fettle Boxxe, it fired right up! Ok, so back to the meteor shower. We got down to the farm around 11:00 pm, and while we were waiting for the meteor shower to start, my partner tried some sky shots. I guess you can't really see them that well with the site's image size restrictions, but I'll post 'em anyway.
Then he tried out a star trail shot. I was getting kinda bored and was already on my second cup of wine, so I preheated the FL6.
We fired up his 57 Guardsman too. Or is it a 59? I can't recall at the moment. It was one of his Christmas presents a couple years ago and gets a lot of use.
This was our first time firing up one of his FL6's in an open area, and we were blown away at the light these guys put out!!! WOW!!! It was wearing a standard Tilley 300 cp mantle, so perhaps with the correct smaller mantle, it may even be a bit stronger. Anyway, he devised a plan to do a long exposure picture while I manned the floodlight. 1. I covered the front of the floodlight with a thick canvas jacket, blocking the light. 2. He opened the camera shutter and did a 20 second exposure. (Is that the right terminology? I dunno.) 3. After a 6 second wait, I'd uncover the floodlight for 2 seconds while sweeping it in an arc to light the crops. Then I'd place the jacket back over the glass to block the light. 4. He'd wait out the last 12 seconds and finish the exposure. I was a little apprehensive about the heat on the jacket, but it blocked the floodlight glass for only 30 seconds at most, and never got too hot. It worked out well!
The meteor shower ended up being kind of a bust, but he had fun playing with his camera, and I had fun drinking wine out in a field! Our trusty steed for the evening. The water was low and the frogs were singing, so I walked around in the creek a bit trying to spot them. No luck, but I did see a random cat, so I guess that's kinda wildlife.
And the faithful FL6, quietly hissing away. Calm and collected, it did a great job all night long. Welp, hope y'all enjoyed! Happy lamping and lanterning! Love, Pinky
It's been pretty much the same story for me, every meteor shower I've tried to observe.... I've never seen one yet that has lived up to the hype! Still you got some great pictures out of it
Thanks y'all! It's always fun to get a lamp or stove out and actually put it to work! Usually they just sit on display around the house. The FL6's spend most of their day lazily napping beside the fireplace. (Don't worry. It's rarely used and they're kept empty.) And Gneiss, I agree! Every time we stay up late for a meteor shower or lunar eclipse or something like that, it's either a dud or the sky is blanketed in clouds. We had fun anyway though!
I've had bu&&er-all luck with meteor showers but over the years quite a bit of success viewing lunar eclipses. I managed to get some good sightings of the aurora borealis a couple of weeks back. No success with images because I couldn't figure out how to do a time exposure on either of my el-cheapo cameras - and I didn't have a tripod with me, even supposing I ever worked it out (and about 200 pensioners in the way at any given time, jostling about and firing off their flashes - as if that was going to help...) Anyway, I had to resort to buying an image taken by the ship's photographer. Unfortunately, it's lost a good bit of quality during the scanning, optimising and transferring to this computer via memory stick but you get the idea:- This was by no means the best sighting I had, which was a pink and green shimmering curtain around 2.30am, no doubt when the photographer was safe and warm, tucked up in bed dreaming of high-end cameras and the like. And yes, M.V. Marco Polo - the one that went aground in the Lofoten Islands that same trip! http://news.sky.com/story/1364947/cruise-ship-carrying-750-tourists-runs-aground
