Perseids Meteor Shower

This is a late night into early morning event Saturday to Sunday!

This year's Perseids Meteor shower might be excellent, weather permitting. There will be no moon until 02:40 and if skies are clear, we might see a nice light show of rocks burning up in the atmosphere.

The peak this year is the night of August 12 to 13, and the best time to see the most meteors is anytime that night, but peaks in the early morning hours of Sunday.

The Perseids radiant (origin) point is the formation of Perseus, hence the name. The radiant will come over the horizon around 10 p.m. north-nort-theast. At 1 a.m., and rise high into the sky, with Andromeda nearby and the Milky Way on full display, too.

Even though meteors come out of the radiant point, they can be observed all over the sky, looking north-east only maximizes your chances to see more.

To shoot this, it works best with the widest angle lens you have, but it needs a wide aperture also, f/2.8 or wider, f/4 is pushing the limits. A 14mm f/2.8 lens is great, something wider is better, but a 20mm f/1.8 might work well, too, because you can shoot at lower ISO. A fisheye will cover the entire sky, getting you more hits, but it is a unique viewpoint without much foreground.

If you have two cameras and tripods and lenses, bring both to cover more sky. Include the north star Polaris for reference in your composition. Or use the second camera for regular night photos, tracking the Andromeda or Milky Way.

Stay until 2:40 to shoot a 7% crescent moon rising in the NNE at 52°.
This will be around low tide (1 a.m.)
We will meet in the parking lot and walk together, please be on time or you will miss us.

Here is more info:
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/meteor-shower/perseid.html
and
https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-perseid-meteor-shower/

David Kingham has a great, short video to explain how to overlay photos with meteors in it to make it look like they are all coming out of one location. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7JVwSX1iAg).