It’s official. Photographing meteors is hard.
Don’t look for meteors in the picture above, because there aren’t any.
My master plan last night, on the 12th August peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower, was to capture in one photograph all the good stuff above: Moon, Venus (bottom left), Jupiter (top) close to Hyades and Pleiades star clusters in Taurus, Orion rising – PLUS a nice Perseid meteor, preferably an exploding fireball, flying through the whole thing.
It doesn’t work like that unfortunately, and, by the time Venus came into view, the meteors had dried up for the night.
Anyhow – I did get something for four hours of clicking and coffee in the dark. The first pic below is actually yesterday’s effort, but the rest were taken this morning between midnight and 4 a.m. outside Los Angeles. A bright hazy sky has reduced the meteor trails to barely visible streaks – but they are there, some with red-green coloration caused by different chemical elements burning off at different times as the meteor enters the atmosphere. Camera and exposure: Canon 7D on tripod unguided, 17mm lens, f.4, 30 seconds, ISO 400-640.
The Perseids are off their maximum now, but will be around for a couple more days if you want to try photographing one yourself. Just point the camera anywhere in the sky after 11 pm or so.
Master plan!! I often have those, In my mind there are millions of stars in the sky with a silhouette of snowdon infront of it… Ohh dear its cloudy. That was every night last time we were in wales.
Hi Gareth,
That would make a nice shot, and I can think of a couple of good spots to do it – on the Pen-Y-Pass and Llanberis sides. The there’s the question of getting streaks or points of light for the stars. You’d need a drive to keep points over a long exposure, which is a bit of bind setting up in the middle of nowhere. I’m probably going to be up there in September and will have a go at some long exposures from the campsite above Llanberis (unless I wimp out and stay at the Royal Vic)
I have a remote which I tried to use in Spain unfortunately there was too much light. I found I can get an exposure time of about 50 seconds at 17 mm. It’s a shame my aperture is only f4
I meant 50 seconds without streaking. I’m not used to typing on the ipad