Meteor shower photography: where, when and how

Meteor showers occur around a dozen times every year, when Earth passes through streams of particles left by a comet or asteroid. Most of these particles are the size of a grain of sand, though they can be up to a metre wide. They travel at tens of kilometres per second and produce bright streaks in the night sky as they burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Pro photographer Fergus Kennedy has plenty of experience of shooting meteor showers. "They offer great opportunities to get unique images," he says. "They don't come around too often and quite a few elements need to come together before you get a good shot, so it's exciting when they do."

Individual meteor showers vary in intensity; at their peak, they can produce between 10 and 150 meteors per hour. Each shower occurs annually, when the Earth's orbit takes it through a specific cloud of particles, and is visible in a particular part of the night sky. One of the best is known as the Geminids, because the shower approximately aligns with the Gemini constellation. It takes place in early December and usually peaks around 14 December.

Here, Fergus, in the UK, and fellow astrophotographer Timo Oksanen, based in Finland, offer their expert advice for photographing meteor showers.

When planning a meteor shower shoot, first find out exactly when and where in the night sky the showers will be taking place. Several websites and apps are available which tell you when specific showers will happen, where to look in the sky and the period at which they're most active and therefore likely to give the best images. They are generally best in the hours just before sunrise.

Favourable conditions on the day are essential. "All night-sky photography is weather-dependent and obviously a clear sky is ideal," says Fergus. "Meteor shower photography is also quite moon-dependent, and you need to check a moon-phase calendar as part of your preparations. If you're shooting when there's a full moon, it will bleach out the sky and make it much harder to get good shots."

Phone apps are also available which will pinpoint the area in the sky where you're likely to see the most meteors for any particular shower.

Fergus uses the Canon EOS R5 for his meteor shower photography, mounted on a sturdy tripod. "I like its high 45MP resolution and the low-light ability – the two key features for meteor shower photography," he explains. "That resolution is especially useful if you find all your meteors are on one side of the picture – you can still crop in and have a good resolution image.

"The EOS R5 has definitely made a difference to my astrophotography," he adds. "The camera's high ISO performance is at the cutting edge of sensitivity in terms of full-frame sensors."

Timo has recently replaced his Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with a Canon EOS R6, which shares the EOS R5's excellent low-light performance. "I think it's slightly better than the EOS 5D Mark IV in how it handles noise," he explains. "It's also an improvement shooting mirrorless, because instead of an optical viewfinder, which shows you the same view as the naked eye, the electronic viewfinder shows you what the sensor sees. Or you just use the big screen on the back. So it's easier."

The unpredictable nature of meteor shower photography means you'll get the best results with a series of images shot over a long period, rather than several long exposures. To do this, both photographers use their cameras' built-in interval timers. This enables them to automatically set how many shots they want the camera to take and how long the interval will be between shots.

"If you're shooting from your garden, you can just leave your camera clicking away with the interval timer while you go to bed, then get up in the morning and see what's there," says Fergus. If your camera doesn't have a built-in interval timer, you can use a separate intervalometer, such as Canon's TC-80N3 Timer Remote Control.

Using the interval timer, Fergus sets his camera to shoot exposures of around 25 seconds with the lens aperture wide open and an ISO of 1600 or 3200. He shoots in RAW, so he can record maximum detail. "It may take a little trial and error to get the exposure right, but these settings are a good starting point," he says.

Even with the camera shooting steadily over a long period, the success rate for capturing meteor showers is usually low. "When I was photographing the Perseid meteors in August, I shot almost 500 photos over about 90 minutes," says Timo. "Only around 40 frames had some sort of meteor in them, and only 20 or so had good meteor images."

Both Timo and Fergus select their best images and layer them in Adobe® Photoshop® or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom® to get a good number of meteors in the same frame.

As their meteor shower shots are taken over a long period, the stars gradually change position in the frame because of the Earth's rotation. To avoid star trails in their images, they select just one of their images for the background stars, then use the eraser brush to remove everything apart from the meteors in the other layers. Detailed tutorials on how to make meteor shower composites in this way are available on YouTube.

Making all the preparations Fergus and Timo have suggested will make it more likely that you'll get some great meteor shower shots, but results are not guaranteed. "You have to be patient and persistent," says Timo. "Usually, if you point the camera in one direction for at least an hour, then you start to capture some pretty good meteors."

Fergus agrees. "There's quite a lot of luck involved," he says. "If your shoot doesn't work out, try again next time. Even if you don't always catch all the meteors you want on camera, it's fun being out there."

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