Perseid Meteor Shower

<p>Is anyone planning on photographing the Perseid Meteor Shower? I don't know that I can, but I'd like to try. If you've attempted this type of photography and been successful, can you tell me what lens and equipment would be best and what types of settings would make it work? <em>In my mind's eye I have a glorious landscape photo with a deep blue sky streaked with numerous darts of white (ha ha ... aint gonna happen ...). </em>I'm afraid it will only be a black blob with a blue white pinpoint, but I'm willing to make the attempt. Any help or suggestions could be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>The morning of Aug 12 was supposed to be the best time, but I saw three meteors in an hour of watching. Another chance in the evening of the 12th, they say (there's a NASA<a href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/31jul_perseids2009.htm"> link</a> , it has a sky chart showing where to look (NE).</p>

<p>Hi, you might want to read <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/meteor.shtml">this Luminous Landscape article </a>for starters.</p>

<p>The information about star trails is particularly important to consider.</p>

<p>See earlier post this topic for the faint trail I captured last night, which was supposed to be the best of nights.</p>

<p>I attempted last night and saw very little. Damn! Good luck though, the prime spots (peak times) have already left to catch them on your camera.</p>

<p>I just got back in. I was off by a day for the Peak but where we were in the center of Florida we saw plenty. I'd say 50-100 in the course of the 8 hrs from 11pm to 7am this morn. The moon rise gave us the largest problem of all and by the end of the night u could only see the really big ones, no little streaks.</p>

<p>We layed out on the east side of our garage roof for a bit last night, and saw a few. As I read on the net, they seem to come in bursts. The bursts spaced around 15 minutes apart, and during those bursts we saw 2~4 in the course of maybe 5 minutes. Noticed a few satellites too ;)</p>

<p>Ok now that i just reread ur original post no one has actually answered ur questions. ... I am BY NO WAY an authority on this, it was my first attempt ever at this on wendsday and I had alot of altering settings as I was going due to the moon rising higher and higher and throwing more and more light... ... but here it goes, ..<br>

<br /> I shoot wiht a Nikon D200 and was using a Tokina 10-17mm 3.5-4.5 Fisheye lens on a stable tripod with a remote trigger release (I wouldnt bother buying the expensive nikon wireless one, I just used a $5 corded one from Amazon and it worked fantastic).<br>

<br /> There are both bonuses and drawbacks to this lens for this. The drawback is the same as with using fisheye for anything. If your including somehting with straight line (such as a landscape) it WILL be curved. But the bonuses on this lens is... you get more of the sky involved in the picture, and the sky doesnt care about the fisheye lens becuase there are no strait lines to bend unless u get a meteor across the corner of the frame.<br>

<br /> The settings you are gonna use depend completely on where u are, how much light pollution u are dealing with and if the moon is out. I was located for the night in the center of the state of florida so i was pretty far from most light sources but i had the moon to deal with behind me,so I was using ISO 500 most the night with a timed epxosure of about 3 minutes. The longer u have the shutter open the more movement you will get in the stars. Depending on what you are looking for in your picture u will want to adjust that accordingly, in 3 minutes I did not get a ton of movement but in 5 minutes I got way too much movement for my liking. Also obviously the longer u keep the shutter open the more chances of you having multiple meteors in the frame.<br /> If i missed anything ask. If i know it I will tell u or try to point u in the right direction, once again this was a very big learning episode for me.<br /> -Mike</p>

<p>PS - you want to fiddle wiht the camera as little as possible 5x throughtout the night while I was fiddling with settings a meteor shot right across the center of my frame.<br /> The one meteor I did get on camera that night can be seen here http://www.photo.net/photo/9633838&size=lg<br /> And the next shower of interest is Nov 17 and 18th</p>