Catch a Shooting Star!

Last night was the peak of the Lyrid meteor shower. Having never photographed a meteor, I thought this would be a good chance to try to capture a picture of one. And guess what, I got one! Here's the photo:

The picture shows ten minutes worth of star trails and the meteor's streak in the center. So how can you take such a picture? Well, I haven't done much reading about optimal strategy to capture a meteor, but I thought that I'd share my experience on how I managed to take this particular photo.

First, obviously, I realized that the meteor shower was going to peak last night. Luckily, yesterday was one of my days off from university in Beirut, so I was home near Saida where there are relatively darker skies (Beirut skies are basically a total light pollution washout). Still, there is a good deal of light pollution, and how I dealt with this is explained below.

To capture a meteor on any day, you have to be lucky! Still, your chances are much better if you photograph during a shower, as I did. I looked at a star chart in Astronomy magazine to find out where the radiant of the shower would be, which turned out to be very close to the star Vega, and I used Stellarium software to figure out what the sky would look like around midnight from my location, which is when I planned to set up my camera. Most meteors during showers are seen in the hours following midnight simply because then, the Earth from your location is heading straight towards the space-debris that causes meteors to appear. The radiant is the point from which meteors during a particular shower seem to emanate from.

I set up my camera on a tripod, attached my cable release and headed up to the roof of our building. Then, I focused my lens by taking several 5-second test shots of Vega (a bright star), and pointed my camera to a point in the sky above the radiant (which I approximated by the position of Vega). The reasons I pointed the camera away from the radiant and not straight at it are two: First, at midnight, the radiant was still low, and pointing towards it would mean more light pollution to deal with. Second, meteors don't really emerge right from the radiant, but usually in the area around it. So, I positioned my camera in such a way that the radiant would eventually cross its field as the night progressed, thus ensuring that my camera was always pointed somewhere close to (but not precicely at) the radiant.  

I used the lowest focal length possible on my zoom lens, 18mm, in order to capture the widest chunk of sky, increasing my chances of a meteor passing through the field. I chose an ISO of 800, which on test exposures showed several stars but not so much light pollution. Lastly, I made consecutive 30 second exposures instead of one long exposure, again to minimize light pollution.

To capture the meteor in the picture above, I made a total of 4 hours, 6.5 minutes of exposures (again, using 30 second individual frames). The general rule is that the longer you wait, the greater your chances are of seeing a meteor. Of course, I went to bed while my camera did all the work! I just set the camera to continuous shooting mode, locked the cable release, and waited to make sure I heard the camera's shutter trigger before leaving.

Another thing I did was to make sure I had a fully charged battery before night. I also used the JPEG image quality option in my camera to increase the number of maximum pictures the camera's memory card would hold. I also put a hand-warmer thingy on the lens to prevent dew, which may or may not have worked, but was there just in case. 

And voila! When I eagerly checked the photos in the morning, I found this:

I combined 20 frames taken before and after the above picture to make 10 minutes worth of trails appear (for dramatic effect, you know), and finally cropped the resulting image to make the one presented at the beginning of this post.

Good luck catching a shooting star! It really wasn't that difficult, and with some tricks and proper planning, you should be able to get one too!

Thanks for reading :)

and clear skies!