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.