There’s a meteor shower tonight. This is how you can see and photograph ‘Shooting Stars’ this summer

Have you ever caught a shooting star? With the Delta Aquariid meteor shower hitting this Wednesday night and the most prolific Perseid meteor shower in August, now is a good time to practice finding and photographing “shooting stars.”

Be aware that meteor showers tend to be strongest after midnight when their location will be firmly on Earth’s night side, but clear skies are just as important.

Here you will find everything you need to know to catch one or two shooting stars.

When is the Delta Aquariid meteor shower?

From July 12 to August 23, the Delta Aquariid meteor shower peaks in the early hours of Wednesday, July 29. It is one of the longest meteor showers of all, with some of the slowest moving “shooting stars”: they move at a leisurely rate of 26 miles / 41 kilometers per second. However, you can look at the few nights around the date and see so many shooting stars, so now is a good time to start photographing it. Expect around 10-20 “shooting stars” per hour.

A small meteor shower, the Capricorn Alphas, also peaks Wednesday through Thursday, which could add five “shooting stars” per hour to the mix.

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When is the Perseid meteor shower?

Peak nights for the Perseids, the most famous summer meteor shower in 2020, are nights from Tuesday, August 11 to Wednesday, August 12 and Wednesday, August 12 to Thursday, August 13, though the few nights on both sides they are almost as good.

However, the Perseids run from July 17 to August 24, so you can watch them right now. Expect around 60 “shooting stars” per hour.

Equipment you need to photograph a meteor shower

You will need a manual DSLR or a mirrorless camera to capture meteors. Most important is a manual camera that allows you to manually control focus, ISO, aperture, and shutter speed; you’re going to take long exposure images for up to 30 seconds.

You’ll also need a relatively wide-angle lens to capture as much of the night sky as possible, and a sturdy tripod to keep the camera stable. A lockable trigger cable is also really helpful.

How to photograph a meteor shower

You need a light and dark night. If it is cloudy, forget it, this technique will not work. The easiest way to capture shooting stars is to line up a shot of the night sky, preferably something well composed with an interesting close-up (a barn, a building, a tree, a mountain …), but that’s not essential. Once you’ve aligned the shot and taken test shots until you’re satisfied with it, simply set up your camera to keep taking the same picture over and over again. You can even “set and forget” and go back inside, to return an hour or two later to pick up the SD card.

You are no looking for a bright white line: an airplane or a satellite. You also won’t capture a lot of “shooting stars” in a photo unless you’re in terrific luck.

Your goal is a photo like this:

Camera setup to photograph a meteor shower

Here are some basic concepts to remember; Use them as a reference point to experiment with, as the environment and the light levels you choose to shoot from will make all the difference:

• Adjust the lens to infinite focus.
• Use a wide angle lens (about 18mm works well).
• Set the aperture to around f2.8 (or as low as possible), choose ISO 800 or ISO 1600, and use a shutter speed of about 25-30 seconds.
• Always shoot in RAW and JPEG.
• Take the same take 200 times.
• Do not turn on any lights while filming.
• Do not touch or kick your tripod during filming.

Being so far from any light source or urban light pollution is helpful, but you should also be able to catch bright meteorites from an urban backyard.

At the end of the session, you can simply go through your SD card on a computer and see if you have captured a “shooting star” in any of your frames.

How to make a ‘star trail’ of a meteor shower

By producing 50-200 almost identical shots of the night sky, you will have also laid the groundwork for a “star trail” photo (see above), so why not produce one of those as well, hopefully featuring one or more? Shooting Stars?”

Free StarStaX software allows you to drag and drop all your photos onto it, from where it will produce a good star trail image. Above is the type of photo you’ll be creating, though note that you must have oriented your camera north to get those concentric circles. That will work reasonably well for the Perseids, though perhaps not for the Delta Aquariids.

Detecting “shooting stars” takes patience, but photographing them is easy enough.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.