How To Capture Meteor Shower On Phone

How to photograph meteors and meteor showers

(Image credit: Stuart Cornell)

Watching meteors flash across the sky is one of the well-nigh impressive sights nosotros tin can witness at night. To successfully photograph meteors and falling star showers using your camera you will need to exist armed with some prior knowledge of your bailiwick, patience and a small-scale dose of luck. Not so long ago you would've had to invest a small fortune on rolls of motion-picture show and developing costs in order to get that elusive meteor image, and even then in that location was no guarantee you lot'd get a quality shot. Now, with modernistic engineering at our fingertips, information technology has never been easier to spend a night under the stars and go dwelling house with your own suite of monumental shooting star images. Yes, there's still a degree of luck involved with photographing meteors, just we'll wait at how you can maximize your chances so that luck plays a much smaller part.

Our guide on how to photograph meteors is function of a range of features on Infinite.com to assist yous go better at snapping the nighttime sky. We as well take tips on how to photograph the moon, and a guide on how to shoot the aurora borealis.

Related: Mirrorless vs DSLR cameras for astrophotography

Choosing a meteor shower

To empathize the best times to photograph meteors, let'due south kickoff consider what a meteor is: a rocky space object, known equally a meteoroid, inbound Earth'south temper at very high speed and ionizing the air around it, producing light as information technology burns up. These particles range in size from fragments the size of a grain of sand to some larger than a football. Most of this rocky matter is the debris left backside from comets and asteroids.

At regular times during the year, World passes through the dusty paths of comets orbiting the Sunday. When this happens, the college concentration of catholic particles hitting the Earth's atmosphere results in a meteor shower. Meteor showers are mostly named afterwards the constellation nearest to the apparent origin bespeak of the meteors. Arguably, the best-known meteor shower is the Perseids, originating in the region of the constellation Perseus and peaking in mid-Baronial. Other significant meteor showers are the Orionids, Leonids, Geminids, Taurids, Aquarids, Quadrantids and Lyrids.

In this 30-second exposure by NASA photographer Bill Ingalls, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower on Aug. 12, 2016, in Spruce Knob, West Virginia. — (Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA on The Commons/Flickr)

In that location are some excellent resources available to help you in pinpointing the dates and times of these meteor showers throughout the year. The Photopills smartphone app, for example, has detailed data specific to your location, which volition help you to choose a date that coincides with loftier falling star activity. Another useful online resources is the American Falling star Society. Typically, the peak period of activity during a shooting star shower (and therefore best for photography) is from midnight and into the early hours.

Other factors to consider when choosing your target meteor shower are light pollution and the moon phases. Many smaller meteors will be washed out past the relative brightness of the moon and other artificial calorie-free sources, and so it's of import to select a dark sky location well abroad from light pollution and a brilliant moon phase where possible.

What do you need?

Now that we've decided when to shoot, let'south take a brief look at the equipment you lot'll need:

Camera: A modern digital camera with a Transmission manner. Total frame, APS-C and Micro Four Thirds type cameras are ideal.

Lens: Broad or super-wide angle lenses are best for shooting star showers. Go along in mind that the shorter your focal length, the wider your field of view will be, thereby increasing your chances of capturing a meteor. Lenses in the range of 14mm to 35mm for total frame (or around 10mm to 50mm for APS-C) with a widest discontinuity of f/2.viii or beneath are perfect for the job. Shoot at the lowest f-stop available. If your aperture opens very broad, you tin can afford to stop downwardly the aperture slightly, which volition help to preserve sharpness and star shapes.

Camera with wide angle lens — (Image credit: Getty Images)

Tripod: The sturdier, the amend to avoid milk shake-free shooting.

Intervalometer: You will exist taking multiple frames i after some other for an extended period of time so y'all will need an intervalometer, either as a plug-in accessory or past using the internal intervalometer that some camera models support. They're between $20-forty (opens in new tab) from most stores.

Lens/Dew Heater and portable Power Bank: There'south nada worse than shooting continuously for several hours earlier realizing your lens fogged upward a long time ago, rendering many of the images useless. It can get common cold at night, fifty-fifty in the summer months, so it'due south of import to keep your lens dew-free for the duration of your photography session. A dew heater is a battery powered heated element that wraps around your lens to continue it toasty and ward off the dew. Remember to charge the ability bank before you get out home! Again, these aren't much more than about $20-30 (opens in new tab) in cost.

Spare battery: Continuous shooting will drain your battery, specially in the cold, then make sure you have a back-up battery in case you run out of juice.

Warm clothes: Spending hours in the common cold is no fun if y'all're not prepared for the conditions. Layer upward to keep warm and comfy.

Where should I point my camera?

Camera focusing on night sky — (Image credit: Getty images)

Meteors can be seen anywhere in the heaven. As we discussed earlier, shooting star showers have a signal in the sky from which they announced to originate – the "Radiant". Employ the online tools and phone apps at your disposal to locate the position of the radiant for the time and date of the meteor shower yous have chosen to shoot.

Although it's tempting, try not to aim your photographic camera directly towards the radiant, every bit the meteors closest to the radiant will appear minor and unimpressive. Instead, position the radiant towards the border of the frame, roughly at an angle of effectually 40 to threescore degrees from the radiant. If you aim your camera well-nigh 60 degrees up, your wide-bending lens should embrace a large area of sky and also include some land for some added scale and interest.

Photographic camera settings

The process of photographing meteors is very like to that used for full general night photography. We won't embrace the settings in great detail hither, but you can find more information on recommended settings in our guide on astrophotography for beginners.

Firstly, make sure you lot are shooting in Manual mode. If you plan to postal service-process your images later, make sure you are shooting in RAW file format. Large JPEG file format is fine if y'all don't plan to procedure your shots.

December is usually marked by a series of meteor showers. Geminid meteors (like the one seen in this picture of Florida) light up the skies at the beginning of the month, while the Ursids - which peak tonight (Dec. 22) - put on a show just before Christmas. — (Image credit: Jean Clark )

In one case you've framed your composition of the sky, apply the Live View part of your camera to digitally zoom into a star or afar low-cal source to manually gear up your focus. It'south a good idea to do this with your dew heater on, if you have ane, and then that the focus indicate is non accidentally shifted when it's fastened. You can as well stick some tape on your lens to end the focus ring moving.

With your lens aperture at f/2.8 or lower, use the '500-rule' to gear up your shutter speed. Start with an ISO of 3200 or 6400 and adapt from in that location (take a few test shots to find out what works best for your location). If you have Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) enabled on your camera, switch this off… you are guaranteed to miss the best meteors while your camera is creating a dissonance reduction frame!

You are at present primed for action! Set your intervalometer to run for as long as you can, with ii or 3 second intervals between exposures to maximize your chances of capturing a streaking shooting star or fireball. Get comfortable, sit back and bask the celestial entertainment while your camera does all the hard work!

DSLR versus mirrorless for astrophotography — (Image credit: Getty Images)

Artistic ideas for your meteor images

After your photography session you should have many images on your memory card, hopefully with several meteors and, if yous're lucky, peradventure fifty-fifty a fireball or two. If y'all are mail service-processing your images, you could composite multiple meteors into a single prototype so that the meteors you captured all indicate dorsum to the radiant, which you lot included in your composition. Alternatively, y'all could create a star trail using a stack of your images, or fifty-fifty a stunning fourth dimension lapse of the nighttime.

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Stuart is a mural and night sky photographer based in Cornwall, Uk. Having always had a peachy involvement in photography and infinite, he has refined his photography skills in recent years by combining the two passions to create a portfolio (opens in new tab) of cute mural, night sky and drone images. Inspired by the rugged Cornish coastline, Stuart has had his work featured in several national publications, including a front page photograph credit in The Times.