Perseid Meteor Shower | Landscape Photography

ND1_4800

ND1_4843

ND1_4871

ND1_4872

Back on Wednesday night we decided to stay up late and head out to rural Illinois to try and see if we could see/photograph some of the Perseid Meteor Shower.  This event happens on a yearly basis, though this year was special since it was a new moon (aka no moon to provide light pollution) which is great!  You can keep driving farther and farther from cities, but we haven't found a light switch for the moon yet.  Another great aspect this year was that the skies in Central Illinois were crystal clear, not a cloud to be seen.  Based on how much rain we were getting earlier this summer, we were quite thankful to have such an amazingly clear night.  With all these factors going, the Perseid's did not disappoint.  We were out for about 1.5 hours from 10-11:30 and saw around 20-25 meteors of decent size.  Even with the wide 14-24mm f/2.8 lens all the way out at 14mm, there is only so much of the sky you get it the frame all at once, so we only managed to catch a few, however the Milkway was also there to see.  We didn't even need the camera with long exposure capability to see it, you could see it with your eyes, it was truly beautiful.We caught some astrology inspiration from this trip, so we're hoping to go out again soon and try and mess with some star trails and other fun things before we blink and the weather starts to take a turn for the cooler.  Hopefully you enjoy the photos, we'll have a few up for prints soon on our prints website (prints.jdmaloney.com)!This work by JD Maloney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.