Well, anyone watching social media feeds for last few days should be aware that this year’s Leonid meteor shower peak was last night. As Leo, the radiant point of this shower, is a morning constellation here in the northern hemisphere this time of year, I figured on heading out at Zero Dark:30 and trying to get some meteors in my lens. Weather forecast wasn’t great but when I woke up WAY too early (even earlier than I intended at about 2am) I was pleased to see nothing but starry clear skies here at home base. I brewed the coffee, loaded the gear, and headed out, planning on shooting from the dam at Antelope Lake in Plumas County California. However, about half way to the lake I found I was in fog and overhead cloud cover. It was still 3ish AM so I had time to try a Plan B. That plan was to head north from Janesville up US-395. I thought perhaps the desert would get me back under clear skies. Alas, by the time I got back to Janesville I found it already noticeably cloudier than it was when I’d left an hour before and the desert to the north was actually foggy. My last ditch effort was to drive up the “road” toward the top of Shaffer Mountain, hoping to get above the fog. This actually worked but I was still looking down at fog and up at thick cloud. It was still 4AM and I didn’t want to wake my wife up for a SECOND time in the wee hours of the morning so I made the most out of the situation by setting up a couple cameras to shoot time lapses in the moody conditions while I listened to a couple podcasts in my pickup.
Alas, the one I started while it was still dark didn’t work very well due in part to a big fog bank rolling through right in the middle of the 150ish frames. However, this one is 900+ frames shot from just before to just after dawn and worked a good bit better.