Perseid Meteor Photo 2010 Persied

After much effort, I captured this meteor photo during the Persied

Meteor showers on August 12, 2010. Canon 5D and Canon 50MM 1.8.

Clouds obscured part of the sky in this uncropped photo. I'll be

posting more details on my meteor photography tips page soon.

congrats with capturing a meteor like this.  i went out last night, but i don't think any of the meteors showed on pictures.  what was your ISO/exposure time/f stop for this?

According to the auto-extracted EXIF for this, it was shot at f/4.5, ISO 1000, 30 second exposure.  Auto-extracted EXIF is often errant so maybe Jim can verify.

I was shooting from the middle of one of the largest metropolises (metropolae?) in America with massive light pollution and managed to get this...

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r34/F1Addict/IMG_3466_pn499.jpg

...also a 5D, 30 second exposure but at f/4, ISO 400.  I was originally shooting 90 seconds at ISO 100 to reduce grain but at ISO 100 there is too little sensitivity to capture the virtually instantaneous off/on/off nature of these meteors as they burn through our atmosphere.  This is an unmodified 100% crop.  I was using a 17-40 f/4L at 17mm to minimize star trails resulting from long exposure.

Jim's photo is much better than mine.  I much prefer the darker backdrop and his stars are well defined and brilliant.  The meteor tail is really impressive and the cloud sneaking up on the scene adds tension.  He barely caught this, which makes it kind of more cool than if it was just a shot of a starfield with a streak in it.  Nice job, Jim.

Thanks for the comments.  Exposure time was 30 seconds and this one was at F4.5 ISO may have been 1250.  I'll look into it.

This was one of several dozen exposures over two nights.  I was using two cameras/tripods, located in the White Mountains of NH where skies are quite dark.  I planned a camping trip (open field tenting) to coincide with August 12th Persied Meteor Showers.  Cloud cover was a problem some of the time on the 12th.  This meteor was photographed at about 11:30 pm or so.

I captured a couple of other less impressive meteors on other shots but the other meteors did not fill the frame like this one.

I'll be adding this photo and more info about it to my meteor photography tips page soon.

http://www.saugus.net/Photos/meteor_photography_tips_night.shtml

Great work Jim! I was out looking but we had a very hazy night and I did not see anything. it gets really dark here not too much light pollution but very late sunset. I keep trying to get the moon over the Tantalus range. It is right up the street but I really do not know what I am doing with night photography.

Jill

It should be noted that I did not actually see this meteor when it occurred. 

Only after reviewing the LCD did I see it and I felt a sense of relief, mission accomplished.  It was late. I was the only one awake, but I laughed out loud when I saw this on the LCD.

I'm disappointed that clouds block stars on the left and lower right.

My other meteor photo is different in many respects.  Both are shown full frame, no cropping.

Nice photo Jim, its much harder to get the meteor's than people think. I shot some on the same night. 

Great capture! I am so glad that someone captured this. This turned out great!!

Thanks for the comments everyone.  This meteor photo did not come without lots of patience, persistence and lots of luck.