Wyze at Night

  I've continued experimenting with my Wyze V3 at night. Yesterday I saw that the International Space Station (ISS) would make a pass just to my north beginning at 5:45 AM. That sounded like a good test: it would be high enough in the northern sky (44°) to be easily visible and it would be too early for me to get out of bed.

 So I set the Wyze up in the back yard before I hit the sack.

 I took Mom's wooden stool that she kept on the back porch and sat the camera atop it. I held the camera down with a small piece of wood across the camera's base, weighted down with a brick (in case the wind blew). I ran an extension cord from the garage to the camera and placed the connection and transformer inside a plastic bag (in case it rained). In other words, this was one high class experiment.

 From behind, the camera was angled high enough to see from NW to NE. The frame is wide enough  (130°) that the edge of the garage shows up in the videos (on the right). To avoid that I'd have had to use a longer extension cord and placed the camera farther afield. This was just to be a quick experiment so I didn't want to bother with it.

So, how did it do? Well, my first goal was to catch the ISS. The camera caught it beautifully. The clock is on the lower right and that is the local time. At 5:47:19 you'll see the ISS pass just under Polaris.

 For a $38 camera, it does a pretty good job. The view is a bit "noisy" but it's entirely good enough for this sort of thing. The camera is certainly not designed for this use.

 I also set the camera up to record a time lapse from 9 PM (09/09/21) to 7 AM (09/10/21). It was supposed to be a clear night but obviously it wasn't in the early hours. Nevertheless, the stars can be seen circling Polaris, rotating counter-clockwise.

 This time lapse was set to record one frame per minute. It ran for 10 hours so it recorded 600 frames. At a playback speed of 30 fps, the video runs 20 seconds.

 Can this idea be used for a meteor shower? Will the quick flash be enough to trigger a motion event? I would think so because headlights quickly flashing across the trees in this shot did cause such an event to be recorded.

 I think a winter night would be even better. We had enough clouds that the sky wasn't as clear as it might have been. But the result is plenty good for an experiment.