I’m not sure if a specific thread is a good idea or not however a lot of people are out in our NH looking for these meteors over the next week or so. Perhaps a few bolides ( big meteors) will be caught Aug 13 peak. The moon is still somewhat of an issue this year but a few of us patient folks might catch a few and this would be a place to post photos of them. Best of luck! Mike. Edit: I am aware of the all sky cameras etc but still plan to go out as usual this year😎

Edited August 12Aug 12 by hamateur 1953
All sky cameras

https://rutube.ru/video/49ee4839e086bbebd238be75eb2b12aa/

Edited August 12Aug 12 by Samrau

I can remember photographing them and Aurora last year, really quite cool! If we manage some clear sky I will be out watching 👀 Might take the camera and just stick it on a time-lapse.

What's the best settings for capturing streaks and bolides, long exposure and low f with a wide lense?

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

What's the best settings for capturing streaks and bolides, long exposure and low f with a wide lense?

Photographing meteors is one of the reasons I change my camera. My Canon 2000D doesn't see medium- and low-brightness meteors well, and they fall the most. Most meteors fly by in less than a second or so, so they are impossible to catch with prolonged exposure. Therefore, the camera has increased requirements for photosensitivity. The shutter speed should be adjusted according to the focal length of the lens.:

Focal length — Shutter speed for FF — Shutter speed for crop

10mm — 40s — 30s

14mm — 35s — 25s

18mm — 25s — 15s

24mm — 20s — 12s

35mm — 12s — 8s

50mm — 8s — 6s

The crop may vary slightly, and you may also have your own exposure preferences, so it's best to choose the exposure time yourself. ISO is probably 1600-3200, it also depends on the camera, because each camera has its own upper limit, with a good camera and weak meteor showers, you may have to set >6400 to get the right picture.

The aperture also depends on the lens. You need to take a picture at different aperture opening levels, then zoom in and look at the photo.

1 hour ago, Samrau said:

Photographing meteors is one of the reasons I change my camera. My Canon 2000D doesn't see medium- and low-brightness meteors well, and they fall the most. Most meteors fly by in less than a second or so, so they are impossible to catch with prolonged exposure. Therefore, the camera has increased requirements for photosensitivity. The shutter speed should be adjusted according to the focal length of the lens.:

Focal length — Shutter speed for FF — Shutter speed for crop

10mm — 40s — 30s

14mm — 35s — 25s

18mm — 25s — 15s

24mm — 20s — 12s

35mm — 12s — 8s

50mm — 8s — 6s

The crop may vary slightly, and you may also have your own exposure preferences, so it's best to choose the exposure time yourself. ISO is probably 1600-3200, it also depends on the camera, because each camera has its own upper limit, with a good camera and weak meteor showers, you may have to set >6400 to get the right picture.

The aperture also depends on the lens. You need to take a picture at different aperture opening levels, then zoom in and look at the photo.

Cheers! It's with a Z6 and NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S, I'm guessing that lense wins out over my AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D.

44 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Cheers! It's with a Z6 and NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S, I'm guessing that lense wins out over my AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D.

With a wide-angle lens, you have a better chance of catching a meteor, of course, but the 50mm has a better aperture.

The camera is so good, there shouldn't be any problems with any lens.

6 hours ago, Rudolph said:

What's the best settings for capturing streaks and bolides, long exposure and low f with a wide lense?

I've observed and photographed meteors for several decades so let me share a few thoughts. This year the moon is a serious factor for viewing or photographing the Perseids. Frankly its a poor year. With the moon out your exposure times will have to be short. If this year were like 2024, which had a 7 day old moon, I'd travel to a dark site to observe and image. This year with a 90% full moon there is no reason to do that, the sky is never going to be fully dark. The milky way will be washed out nearly all night. Typically that is a great backdrop to shoot meteors against.

That said, with the moon out you have the opportunity to have ground features illuminated in the picture. This can lead to artistic and interesting combinations if you happen to catch one or more meteors in the same field of view. Creative photographers can leverage this situation to their advantage.

In general is best to capture as much light as possible when trying to photograph meteors. That means fast, wide open lens and high camera ISO.

Something like a f/1.8 speed lens is going to be limited to sky (brightness) conditions which is going to vary through out the night. That is, when earlier like when the Perseid radiant is low in the east and the moon is low or not out you might get away with slightly longer exposures. But by prime time, say 03:00 in the morning local time, the moon will be high and you should take even shorter exposures. For instance, f/1.8 at ISO 6400 for 20 seconds is WAY to long with the moon overhead. If you were at a moon free dark sky site that would work but not tonight. You should check your pictures and histogram on the camera.

The general principle in meteor photography is to set your ISO, f stop and exposure time and then use an intervalometer to shoot continuously. You will record 100s of images to go through later. If using a fixed tripod and want a particular constellation or the milk-way as a background you will need to re-point it at various times throughout the night.

As to what lens to use photographing meteors the answer is all of them. Very wide angle like 14mm are good for long trailed meteors but your average brightness meteor will be a short streak in that image. A wide angle is useful but so is the 35 - 50mm range as well. In fact I bought my 40mm f/1.4 specifically for meteor photography. Your more likely to get the shorter less bright meteors with a fast standard focal length lens.

One thing worth knowing is there are several active meteor streams this time of year. For sure you might see some Kappa Cygnids meteors as their peak is in a week. These will come from the constellation Cygnus which is overhead around local midnight. They are much slower meteors, about 24 km/s, so are easy to tell apart from a Perseid which are much swifter at around 60 km/s. Its also possible to see some Alpha Capricornids which are also slower meteors and past their peak time but still active.

As a side note 2024 was a much better year for Perseids (moon wise) and there was geomagnetic activity then as well. Meteors with an auroral backdrop are spectacular and I had hoped for that last year. Unfortunately it was cloudy for 100s of km of me for days so I never got a chance at all. I was pretty disappointed but that is the life of those that chase meteors. Had I had a chance to go out in 2024 I would have run my usual three camera setup. Two cameras on fixed tripods and one camera on a small tracking mount. This allows me to use different lens focal lengths and point at different parts of the sky.

Edited August 12Aug 12 by astroHoward
fix typos

42 minutes ago, astroHoward said:

A long post explaining everything

Thank you for taking the time to write that up, greatly appreciated! Hopefully I'll get something worthwhile, gonna try to scout out some spots to combine ground features 😎

Don't be too afraid of the moon. On the 17th from 23:00 to 00:00 there will be no moon at all, then it will rise and light up the sky with its 41% light power. And every day the moon will interfere less and less. In addition, some fireballs are not afraid even of daylight ))) Therefore, you can hunt on a moonlit night. It will just be difficult to catch weak meteors.

Here is an unedited photo taken on a moonlit night with my entry-level Canon 2000D and a diagonal fisheye lens. 3200/30s/F5.5. Date 2025.07.20. 23:57 (UTC+5). Moon power 20%. There is a meteor trail in the center, but this meteor was bright on its own, I was lucky. The original photo is a bit better, of course, but you can still draw a conclusion.

Moon and Milky Way. 3200/30s/F3.0

40 minutes ago, Samrau said:

Don't be too afraid of the moon. On the 17th from 23:00 to 00:00 there will be no moon at all, then it will rise and light up the sky with its 41% light power. And every day the moon will interfere less and less. In addition, some fireballs are not afraid even of daylight ))) Therefore, you can hunt on a moonlit night. It will just be difficult to catch weak meteors.

Certainly one can photograph with the moon up and it can even have creative advantages. However my point, as both a visual meteor observer and a astrophotgrapher, is one needs to be aware of what the impact of natural and artificial light sources are on the night sky. Without a doubt the darker the night sky the more meteors you will see. This is helpful in deciding if you want to travel to a darker site or stay closer to town to observe or photograph. With the moon out you might as well stay closer to home as the moon is very bright right now.

Many sensationalized articles this time of year will say something like "100 meters per hour possible for tonight's Perseids" and that is wrong or misleading. While its true the zenith hourly rate (ZHR) of the Perseid meteor shower is listed as that (or higher) it is only possible to see that number in specific conditions(1). Certainly a person will see significantly less this year with the moon out. I always encourage people read reputable sources for this information like the IMO, Sky and Telescope or eMeteor News. Robert Lunsford always publishes a weekly summary on two of those sites like this: https://www.emeteornews.net/2025/08/08/meteor-activity-outlook-for-9-15-august-2025/

As to catching a bolide or fireball, that just comes down to luck. Just like auroras you have to go out and be watching or taking pictures to increase your odds. While the possibility of catching a fireball increases during a meteor shower it may not change that much depending on the meteor shower. In some cases that possibility goes way up, for instance the Southern Taurids in October is well known for having a higher number of fireballs. The Perseids do have a higher percentage of fireballs compared to 'average' meteors, perhaps 2-3x the usual average for sporadic meteors. Daytime fireballs are even rarer, I'm sure your familiar with the Chelyabinsk meteor which was a super bolide over Russia in 2013. One never knows when something like that is going to happen!

In visual meteor astronomy, where one might report their observing numbers to the International Meteor Organization (IMO) one important piece of information is what your visual limiting magnitude (lm) is during that observation period. That is, what is the dimmest star you can see? This effectively limits how many meteors you can see. With the moon out like tonight the lm is going to be pretty poor. Cameras are affected as well, at some point the background sky brightness level is higher than a star (or meteors) magnitude. Thus you have to shorten your exposure time, The big advantage to cameras is you can take a number of exposures with a length up to the sky background limit. Then stack these shorter exposures for a much better final image.

This years Perseids maybe a good warm up for less experienced people to try meteor photography. The best meteor show this year - by far - will be the Geminids in December. While the moon will be a slight factor being 24 days old (about 30%) it will rise late in the night. The Geminids are highest in the sky before the moon comes up this year so there will be a good show. For North America it should be a really good show as the shower's peak should be around 1:30am CST (UTC-6) which coincides with it being highest in the night sky! While the Geminids have a lower number of bright meteors than the Perseids it more than makes up for that with numbers. I've personally witnessed an hourly rate of over 150 meteors before.

1. The formula for calculating the zenith hourly rate is as follows:

HR is the hourly observed number of meteors, r is the population index of the meteor shower with a correction factor related to limiting magnitude, F is a correction for any field of view obstructions, if there are none it is 1. Lastly sin (hR) is the sin of the height of the radiant in degrees, so if it is overhead it is at or near 1. This is really the most important point, the highest number of meteors you can see is directly related to the height of the meteor showers radiant (the point where meteors appear to come from).

In a more useful format, if a shower has a ZHR of 100 then this is the number of meteors you can see depending on the radiants height:

That assumes a dark sky of magnitude 6.5 and no obstructions in your field of view. This has very practical implications for the Perseids tonight. When darkness starts the radiant may only be 20 degrees above the horizon or so depending on your latitude. Under ideal circumstances one would at best see around 34 meteors. The Perseid radiant is at its highest right before the end of darkness which is the better time to be observing it. However, the best chance of seeing Earth grazing meteors will be near darkness start in the evening.

All the above is from "The Handbook for Meteor Observers" at the IMO but I can't link it as it is for members only.

Edited August 12Aug 12 by astroHoward
fix typos

All very interesting stuff. Thanks!! It stresses the true likelihood of seeing them. As an incurable optimist I wasted hundreds of hours looking for aurora over the years and honestly knew very little about the complexities until arriving here a few years ago. The fun of the chase never seems to get old and with today’s visual aids we are likely to see some cool stuff posted ( I hope). 😊. Edit: I am sure that other showers are better for observations. However it is pretty cold in December at my latitude ( 47n ). 🤣🤣

Edited August 13Aug 13 by hamateur 1953
Frozen noses

Not sure if I've already mentioned this someplace here on the forum, but --

a few years ago I tried to shoot the Perseids on several nights. As my luck would have it, we only got thunderstorms on those nights right at the peak of the meteor shower. No sky, just clouds and storms!

So about a week later I had forgotten all about the Perseids and I just thought I'd go out one night and try to take a panorama of the Milky Way. It wasn't very late, but it was dark and the Milky Way was coming up.

I was in our back yard, shooting a set of - I think - 13 overlapping verticals to catch the entire Milky Way and some spare room for it. I started shooting from the south, rotating towards north shot by shot. I got to the 12th image and while the shutter was open (10 sec exposure) the LONGEST shooting star showed up to my north, and proceeded to cross the sky all the way to the south in front of me. It took so long I was thinking of pulling my phone out to catch a video of it! Of course it was gone before I got that far, but the sight of this green to pink trail crossing the sky in front of me was nothing short of spectacular.

Then I was holding my breath, not knowing if I had caught it with my camera......

Because I was still in process of shooting the set, I took one more pic as I had planned, and only after that I checked if I had caught the meteor, LOL!

Yep, it was there! My only gripe was that because I was shooting a wide angle lens in vertical, the meteor trail looked NOTHING like it was IRL, because it just looked like it went upwards in the photo.

But at least I didn't miss it, that time, like I usually do...

3 hours ago, NightSky said:

Not sure if I've already mentioned this someplace here on the forum, but --

...

But at least I didn't miss it, that time, like I usually do...

I like your story, IDK how many times I've been out watching and seen a really great meteor. Only to find or know my camera is not pointed in the right direction😡

Spotted a few here In Australia this morning. I was out doing some Sunrise Photography but always get there while still dark,

21 hours ago, hamateur 1953 said:

I’m not sure if a specific thread is a good idea or not however a lot of people are out in our NH looking for these meteors over the next week or so. Perhaps a few bolides ( big meteors) will be caught Aug 13 peak. The moon is still somewhat of an issue this year but a few of us patient folks might catch a few and this would be a place to post photos of them. Best of luck! Mike. Edit: I am aware of the all sky cameras etc but still plan to go out as usual this year😎

There was spectacular one over Melbourne couple of days ago. Haven't got a clip but if people google it will come up with news articles.

11 minutes ago, DavidB said:

Spotted a few here In Australia this morning. I was out doing some Sunrise Photography but always get there while still dark,

There was spectacular one over Melbourne couple of days ago. Haven't got a clip but if people google it will come up with news articles.

Yeah as @astroHoward indicates you would be lucky to get the full event anyway. I guess @JessicaF saw a really big one the other day while out looking for Aurora and may have a pic of the persistent trail. I think she said twelve seconds! Very long.

Surprisingly my sky was clear last night! I watched the sky after true darkness started last night for about a hour, until moon was up a bit. I didn't see much activity. That was expected, Perseid activity doesn't really get going until after midnight. But my meteor cameras watch every night all night rain or shine. This is the detected meteors camera US004L saw last night:

Looks like it was pretty active!

Camera US004L faces west so it was not affected much by the moon. The above image is a composite automatically generated from motion the system thought to be meteors. While it would be fun if it was in color the cameras I run, US002J, US004L and US004M are active members of the Global Meteor Network (GMN). There are 1,000 stations around the world that participate in the network and all of them collect data for meteor science. At the end of local darkness each station processes and uploads its data to a central server that then reduces it a bit further. For instance I can see there are a few lightning bugs in the composition above - typical for my location - and further data reduction helps eliminate false positives.

This is a status page for cameras in your area. For me it pulls up the US but it tries to geo locate your browser and you can also choose other countries :

https://globalmeteornetwork.org/status/

Each station is a valuable contributor and they are more than just a allsky type of camera. The stations run software that attempts to detect meteors and is regularly plate solving the image so it knows exactly where ever event happens in the sky. When two or more stations that overlap in coverage, and are spaced 60-100km or so apart, both detect the same meteor the central processing of the GMN can accurate determine where that meteor came from in space. If it happens to be a big bolide that actually makes it to the ground the GMN can narrow down where any fragments may have landed. Its really pretty cool.

Here is a graph my station (automatically) generated for US004L from last nights detected meteors, what shower they came from and how many:

While the GMN, as well as another network called CAMS, are the future of meteor science data collecting its still fun to actually go out and observe things. Those that still collect information that way usually submit it to the IMO and this is where you can see that information:

https://www.imo.net/members/imo_live_shower?shower=PER&year=2025

Now its maybe a bit behind right now, some that stayed up all night to observe may not have submitted their numbers yet. But check back later and you can see what people reported they saw.

Edited August 13Aug 13 by astroHoward
fix usual typos

@astroHoward It's not surprising, as ZHR currently exceeds 120 meteors per hour.

We're probably experiencing the peak of the meteor shower's activity today.

I'm hunting now

I only put my GoPro out last night because we had 100% humidity and I didn't want my better camera to suffer from that.

Of course, we had some clouds as well.... and the moon was right in the middle of it, because I chose to shoot towards east.

I think I spotted one tiny little meteor in the time lapse - but I haven't taken a proper look at it yet. I really don't expect there to be anything worth mentioning if I didn't see it while running through the time lapse.

Tonight is supposed to be clear skies and humidity between 80 and 93%.

...well crap, I just rechecked the weather forecast and now it says 20% chance of showers. Dammit. Why oh why?

The 2025 Perseids were a total disappointment. Only 13 meteor scatter contacts were made on the 144 MHz amateur radio band on 12^th/13^th August.
Only few bursts (reflections lasting longer than 2 s) were heard. I would have expected many more stations gathering in my log and a longest distance (ODX) of 2000+ km, instead it was only 1500 km. No signs of enhancement by the dust of comet 1079.
Let's hope for next year.

Station details: DG7AC, JO52AJ, 500 W PEP, 7 element Yagi YU1CF (10.4 dBd) 10.5 m agl. ODX: UA1ASA 1514 km.

Ahoi
Pom

Edited August 14Aug 14 by Pom

25 minutes ago, Pom said:

The 2025 Perseids were a total disappointment. Only 13 meteor scatter contacts were made on the 144 MHz amateur radio band on 12^th/13^th August.
Only few bursts (reflections lasting longer than 2 s) were heard. I would have expected many more stations gathering in my log and a longest distance (ODX) of 2000+ km, instead it was only 1500 km. No signs of enhancement by the dust of comet 1079.
Let's hope for next year.

Station details: DG7AC, JO52AJ, 500 W PEP, 7 element Yagi YU1CF (10.4 dBd) 10.5 m agl. ODX: UA1ASA 1514 km.

Ahoi
Pom

I don't know, I don't see much difference. Last night, Japan observed a meteor shower in the truest sense of the word, at the same time over 15 meteors fell into the frame of the DVR. More than 120 meteors per hour were recorded at the Arkhyz astrof in Russia. Apparently you didn't get into the peak activity timing, or I don't understand something, sorry

https://www.asahi.com/articles/AST8G2TS0T8GUBNB002M.html?iref=ogimage_rek

Edited August 14Aug 14 by Samrau

33 minutes ago, Pom said:

The 2025 Perseids were a total disappointment. Only 13 meteor scatter contacts were made on the 144 MHz amateur radio band on 12^th/13^th August.
Only few bursts (reflections lasting longer than 2 s) were heard. I would have expected many more stations gathering in my log and a longest distance (ODX) of 2000+ km, instead it was only 1500 km. No signs of enhancement by the dust of comet 1079.
Let's hope for next year.

Station details: DG7AC, JO52AJ, 500 W PEP, 7 element Yagi YU1CF (10.4 dBd) 10.5 m agl. ODX: UA1ASA 1514 km.

Ahoi
Pom

Note: Pom is a licensed radio amateur ( U. K) and was using the ionized trails left by the meteors to get his signals further than line of sight.. coincidentally these meteors burn up near the same altitude as those pesky Star Link satellites orbit; about 100 km. Best regards. N7ORL Mike and Hagrid 🐈‍⬛

Samrau, the video clip is absolutely amazing!
Mike got it right, again I was just playing radio. If you want to know more about making two-way radio contacts with the help of shooting stars, click the link in the original post. Or here: meteor scatter on wikipedia.

Ahoi
Pom

Edited August 14Aug 14 by Pom

2 hours ago, Samrau said:

I don't know, I don't see much difference. Last night, Japan observed a meteor shower in the truest sense of the word, at the same time over 15 meteors fell into the frame of the DVR. More than 120 meteors per hour were recorded at the Arkhyz astrof in Russia. Apparently you didn't get into the peak activity timing, or I don't understand something, sorry

Sours:AstroAlert

It is extremely unlikely that 15 meteors would fall all at the exact same time. The trails also appear parallel. My guess is that these are specular (and thus short lived) flashes / reflections from a constellation of satellites.