In Photographing Meteor Showers Part 1 I provide some background information about what causes meteor showers and bit about the upcoming Lyrids meteor shower. The Lyrids meteor shower peak is April 21st & 22nd. If you missed this blog you can read it here.

Here in Photographing Meteor Showers Part 2 I offer some pre-planning resources, list ideal meteor photo conditions, explain how to find the radiant point, and suggest a great practical mobile pre-planning app.

Know Your Resources

Capturing a meteor shower with a camera takes a bit of planning. You could get lucky if you simply point the camera at the sky but more than likely you’ll come home with a blank storage card.

Your chance of success will improve significantly if you do a little research and planning ahead of time. Here are a few web resources I recommend. I use these sites continuously to plan almost all of my night sky photo outings.

StarDate https://stardate.org Use this site to learn more about basic night sky concepts. You’ll also find specific information about upcoming meteor showers. Plus it is also a great site to research moon phases for specific dates.
EarthSky https://earthsky.org - This another great site for learning about the night sky. For meteor shower purposes you’ll find information about where the showers will originate and other helpful details.
NASA’s Blue Marble https://blue-marble.de/nightlights/2019 Use this site to find dark sky locations ideal for night photography.
NOAA National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration National Weather Forecast Office https://www.weather.gov/ - Use this site to find out if the sky will be clear and what the weather conditions will be for the photo night selected.
Google Maps https://www.google.com/maps I always like to do a virtual walk-about of the location before I go. The Google maps 3D feature is ideal for for this purpose.
Stellarium https://stellarium-web.org Meteor showers originate from a specific radiant, usually a specific constellation. Use Stellarium to find specific stars or constellations. Plus use the elapse time feature to watch how that constellation will move through the night.
PhotoPills https://www.photopills.com This website provides excellent learning content. I find the PhotoPills mobile app very useful. It is a great value for the inexpensive price. I strongly recommend it. But take notice, to get the most out of this app expect to spend a good deal of time learning it. Once you do learn it your photo pre-planning will be a breeze.

Ideal Meteor Shower Conditions

Dark Sky

A dark sky is critical to capturing night sky phenomena like Milky Way, star trails and meteor showers. This means finding photo locations without light pollution. NASA’s Blue Marble can help find dark sky locations. Below is a night sky screen print of the Central Oregon region.

NASA’s Blue Marble View of Central Oregon

It’s pretty clear from this night sky view where the light pollution is. You’ll need to be a good distance from towns and cities to find dark skies. Note that even at relatively remote places like Mt. Bachelor there is a good deal of light pollution. In this case the light is caused by ‘always on’ lights like parking and building safety lights. Remember the darker the sky the better.

Clear Cloudless Night Sky

A clear sky is also important for most night sky photography. Use the NOAA - National Weather Service site to get up to the minute weather information. This service will provide a forecast five days into the future. You will need to revisit the site as frequently as you get closer to the photo date.

Below is a screen print of the Bend, OR forecast. Notice that this forecast provides percent of sky cover (blue numbers in lower part of table). The night of April 20th between 1 am and 4 am isn’t an ideal night photography opportunity. The predicted percent sky cover is 60%!

Cloud cover of 0-20% is ideal, 20-40% can work, and above 40% make it difficult to capture crisp bright stars or in this case meteors. Notice that the table also provides wind speed and direction, the purple numbers in center of table. If cloud cover is marginal, but the winds will be moderate too high, it might be possible to capture the photo if the exposure is longish.

NOAA National Weather Service prediction including sky cloud cover (blue numbers in bottom table)

Finding the Meteor Shower Radiant

It is important to know where in the sky meteors will originate during a meteor shower. Without this information you won’t know which direction to point the camera.

EarthSky, StarDate and PhotoPills can provide you meteor shower origin (radiant) information. The Lyrids meteor shower will originate near the Lyra constellation, specifically from near the star Vega. The Thatcher comet that sheds the icy meteor shower material is not part of the Lyra constellation. It’s not even close to it. The comet’s orbit around the sun is actually 415 years! However, its debris is aligned with Lyra.

Once you know the origin use Stellarium to discover where the constellation will be on the date of the photo shoot! You’ll also need to know if the constellation is rising or falling as the Earth turns. In this case Lyra is rising. The constellation will be in the lower eastern sky about 9 pm and slowly rise to a very high point in the eastern sky just before sunrise.

The Lyra the constellation from which the Lyrids shower will originate will be seen in the East sky. It will be just above the horizon at about 9pm. From here it will rise in the sky towards the southeast. Below is a screen print of April 22nd sky at 4:25 the time predicted to have the highest meteors per hour. The camera will need to be aimed a bit to the left leaving enough room for Lyra to advance towards the top right of the frame.

Constellation Lyra with Vega star. Lyrids meteor shower will originate from here.

PhotoPills

PhotoPills is a photography mobile device app that has lots of useful features. It is cheap and powerful. It is both an excellent planning tool and an in-field resource. For meteor shower planning it’ll provide you with a graphic visual of how the showers will move through the sky based on your standing position. The app can even provide you with an augmented reality preview!

PhotoPills can also help you plan your photo exposure. We’ll discuss this in Part 3. Below is PhotoPill screen print of the Lyrids meteor path from The Steens area in Southeast Oregon Where I plan to be for the event.

Summary

April 21st & 22nd will be best two nights to see and photograph the Lyrids meteor shower. Use the resources provided to find a dark sky location that looks East. Next use the NOAA National Weather Service site to check cloud cover and weather. Finally since we know the meteors will originate from the Lyra constellation you can begin to consider how you would orient your camera.

In Photographing Meteor Shower Part 3 I’ll discuss the best workflow for taking meteor shower photos.

So, start planning your meteor shower outing.

Cheers,

Steve

Night Sky Workshops