Moonlight Perseids

The Moon will be a nuisance, but you can still get great meteor shots - here's how

- Pete Lawrence

Whichever way you look at it, this year's Perseid meteor shower peak on 12 August is going to be challenging for naked-eye observers. As with all meteor showers, some years are better than others, but this year, there's a large bright Moon near the position of the radiant to contend with.

As a consequence, we have to be adaptable and adjust to conditions when they arise. There's not a lot we can do about the weather, but there are ways to get observational results even under difficult conditions like strong moonlight.

While moonlight significantly hampers visual observing, its impact on meteor photography is somewhat different. Essentially it causes two main issues: a) it overexposes the area of sky near the Moon and b) it limits how long you can expose other areas of the sky if you want to avoid overexposing those too. However, consider what happens when a meteor trail bright enough to record appears. The light from the trail traces a line across your camera's sensor in typically less than a second, and that's the trail image done. In theory, at this point, if you were watching the shower and noted the trail, you could stop the exposure immediately to minimise the effect of moonlight on the rest of the image.

Aim for the action