Five Questions: Nikon Z 8 for Night, Perseids, Aurora Apps and More

The night photography world is full of questions, and we’re happy to help with answers.

This installment of our “Five Questions” series features inquiries about the new Nikon Z 8, locations to shoot the Perseids, aurora apps, filter systems and an Irix lens.

If you have any questions you would like to throw our way, please contact us anytime. Questions could be about gear, national parks and other photo locations, post-processing techniques, field etiquette, or anything else related to night photography. #SeizeTheNight!

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1. The Nikon Z 8 and Night Noise

Question:

Since the Nikon Z 8 was announced this week, do you have an opinion about it with respect to night photography and noise, and how it compares to Nikon’s other mirrorless cameras? I’m currently shooting with a D850, which I really like but it’s getting long in tooth. In your opinion, what is the best high-res Nikon mirrorless camera for night photography at this point? — Jeff

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Nikon Z 8.

Answer:

Three of our team members shoot with the Nikon Z 6II, one with the D780 and one with the D5. Between all of us, we’ve shot the Z 7 and Z 9, but none of us owns one, and none of us intends to own one. That tells you something about our preferences, but it doesn’t mean those are bad cameras, even for night photography. Shooting priorities matter.

We haven’t done methodical comparisons between the Z models, and the Z 8 is not yet shipping, so we have no experience with that model. But from our experience shooting Z cameras, here’s what we know:

We have found that the Z 6II has a slight edge in high ISO characteristics, with the Z 9 not that far behind. The Z 8 features the same 45.7-megapixel full-frame sensor and Expeed processor as the Z 9, so the former should perform as well as the latter does for a high-resolution camera at night. In other words, the Z 8 is kind of a mini Z 9, so we’d expect the same results.

That would mean the Z 6II would still be the best option for low-light photography in terms of high ISO noise, all things being equal.

However, all things usually aren’t equal. There is a lot that goes on in determining the best noise characteristics of any given camera. You could do a side-by-side test by shooting the same scene with all of same parameters, but that may not be the best test for night photography.

For example, when shooting to freeze star points, you need to use a faster shutter speed on a camera with a higher pixel count than you would on one with a smaller pixel count to achieve the same visual result. This means you need to use a faster ISO on that higher-resolution camera. Now you are no longer comparing apples to apples.

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The Z 8 autofocus is sensitive down to -9.0 EV, making it the best camera autofocus for low-light photography.

There are other considerations with the higher pixel count as well. Such as:

• Do you like to do a lot of star stacking? High-resolution files can really bog down that process due to their sheer size.

• Do you like to make giant prints? If so, a higher-resolution camera could be a great choice.

• Another consideration would be the better low-light focusing the Z 9 and Z 8 have—a feature called “Starlight View.” If you have trouble focusing at night, this capability alone may trump everything else.

• The Z 8 simulates the Z 9 in high-speed capture, advanced auto-focusing capabilities and superhigh-resolution video. If you like to shoot sports and wildlife in addition to night photography, those robust features would be a huge asset.

In short, we have not shot with the Z 8 yet so we can’t really say how it will compare with the other Z models. We do look forward to getting our hands on one and putting it through its paces, but seeing as none of us shoots with the other higher-resolution cameras, my guess is that our collective preference will remain the Z 6II. — Tim

2. Perseids from the Curb

Question:

Can you recommend someplace I could go to photograph the Perseid Meteor Shower where I’d have the possibility of an outstanding foreground and dark sky for the meteors? One caveat: I have a knee issue. — H.

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PhotoPills confirms that Great Sand Dunes National Park could be a great Perseids option.

Answer:

It sounds like you need a good roadside location. You also definitely need someplace with a north/northeast view and no light pollution in that direction, nor a mountain range blocking the sky.

Great Sand Dunes National Park is awesome for those criteria. You can shoot roadside and have the dunes in front of the mountains with the sky above. I’d even be tempted to attempt a vertorama with a blue hour bottom and star field above.

Badlands National Park also has some spectacular pull-outs where you could do the same. The beaches of Olympic National Park fit the bill, but the ones with the best foregrounds require at least a little bit of a walk, and slippery stones may be troublesome if the tide is receding. At Crater Lake National Park, shooting from the lodge over Wizard Island could be amazing. — Matt

Note: For more information about shooting meteor showers, be sure to check out our e-book Great Balls of Fire.

3. Tracking Auroras

Question:

Can you share the aurora tracking app that you use? — Deborah C.

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Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland. © 2023 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 4 seconds, f/4, ISO 6400.

Answer:

The answer is ... several! I’m on Android, and I use My Aurora Forecast. Lance, Tim and Matt are on iPhone, and they use Aurora Forecast (Lance, Tim), My Aurora Forecast & Alerts (Matt) and SpaceWeatherLive (Matt).

We recommend using more than one. Pooling info from different sources can give a more accurate picture of what might happen and where. Also, it can be nice to set up an automated alert—sometimes we can end up shooting auroras on a night we didn’t know they’d happen. — Chris

4. Finding a Filter System

Question:

I’d like to get a filter system that works with my lenses—primarily an 82mm and 95mm. But I also have a very concave lens (the Sigma 14-24mm f/2.8), so I’m thinking I need a 150mm system. — Rachna

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NiSi S6 150mm Filter Holder.

Answer:

Welcome to the wonderful world of filters! This is a great way to extend long exposures during the day and night.

I’m a fan of square systems, as they offer the most versatility. Going down the path you suggest, I suggest you invest in these three things:

1. NiSi 150mm Filter Holder for Sigma 14-24mm lens

2. the adapter rings for 105mm, 95mm and 82mm filter threads

3. Starter Kit that includes 6-stop, 10-stop and 3-stop graduated 150mm neutral density filters

This is pricey but gets you everything you need, albeit in a big kit. (Most people who invest in 150mm filters find them cumbersome, but that’s the way it goes.)

Alternatively you can use rear ND filters for the Sigma and then use 100mm filters for your other lenses. This would be more cost-efficient, as well as a smaller footprint on your lenses and bag. The caveat is that there are no rear graduated ND filters, so scenes that would normally call for them would need to be shot with multiple exposures and blended in post.

But if you do choose to go that way and use a 100mm square filter system, the NiSi V7 Advance Kit includes pretty much everything you would need except the 95mm adapter. However, the caveat with this system is that the circular polarizer will work only with lenses 82mm or smaller.

Another thought is that most mirrorless lenses are smaller than their DSLR counterparts, and they don’t have bulbous front elements. Therefore, switching to mirrorless also facilitates a more compact and cost-efficient filter system.

Finally, why do I keep recommending NiSi? There are lots of filter systems that are great. I happen to like NiSi because they are a good value. I’ve been using them for more than 5 years and couldn’t be happier. — Gabe

5. Eyeing the Irix 21mm

Question:

I have a Canon R6 mirrorless camera and I’m looking for a good, fast astro lens. I noticed you recommended the Irix 15mm f/2.4 lens. Is the Irix 21mm f/1.4 good for astro too? — Jim

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Irix 21mm f/2.8.

Answer:

I’ve shot with the Irix 15mm for years and am quite fond of it. You need to stop down to f/3.2 to eliminate most of the coma. I have not shot with the 21mm yet but will be receiving one soon. Based on their other f/1.4 lenses, I’d expect that you’ll need to stop down to f/2.8 or thereabouts to minimize the coma.

The main thing for you and the R6 is that these lenses are DSLR-mount only. If you don’t mind using the adapter, then I’m sure either would be a great lens for you—the choice just depends more on your style of shooting. The 15mm focal length is quite wide, so you really need a foreground.

My first choice would be the Canon 15-35mm f/2.8, which wide open should get you coma similar to the stopped-down Irix lenses. But if that is not in your budget, I’d go with whichever of those Irix lenses fits your shooting style the best. — Lance

Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2023). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Wishing Upon Some Falling Stars: The Tau Herculids May (or May Not) be a Night of a Lifetime

One autumn night in 1995 I arrived home late. I was about to walk into the back door of the house when I casually looked up at the stars, and there it was: comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. Wow. It was as clear as anything else in the sky, beautifully floating amidst the stars. I’d never seen anything like it. Moreover, after Halley’s Comet had so disappointed me as a young teen in 1986, I’d really expected never to see any comet at all.

Sometimes the universe can seem so static. From one night to the next we look up and see what seems like the same stars, the same moon, the same unfathomable expanse of nothing that surrounds our pale blue dot.

Then something reminds us that the universe is always in motion, always in flux, always ready with a surprise. We get a lunar eclipse that seizes the interest of half the globe. Or a comet that no one had known existed sails in from the Kuiper belt and dazzles us for a glorious summer month. Or, in the case of this week, a brand new meteor shower rains stars into our night sky.

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Comet NEOWISE over Jordan Pond, Acadia National Park. © 2020 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Six stitched frames shot at 15 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

What? Well, maybe. This Monday, May 30, we might see one of the most dazzling displays of meteors ever. Or not. Astronomers aren’t sure, and the only way to find out is to stay up and look up.

The meteoroids in question do exist. They’re left over from that 1995 flyby, and now Earth is maybe about to come upon them in space.

Maybe? Well, astronomers aren’t exactly sure how far the debris has traveled, but some credible projections put them right in Earth’s path. If those projections are accurate, and if we pass through the heart of the debris cloud, it could produce one of the densest clusters of shooting stars ever witnessed. The Tau Herculid Meteor Shower, as its come to be known, could be astronomically historic.

What does that mean in terms of the number of potential shooting stars? The meteorologist for The Washington Post says 1,000 per hour. Universe Today says as many as 1,400. (To put those numbers in perspective, consider that a really good year for the famous Perseid Meteor Shower yields about 100 per hour.)

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Perseid Meteor Shower outburst over Badlands National Park. © 2021 Matt Hill.

But, again, the Tau Herculid number could be zero.

In fact, zero is the hunch of Tyler Nordgen, astronomer, Night Photo Summit speaker and author of the book Stars Above, Earth Below: A Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks. “If I were to bet, I’d say this upcoming meteor shower will turn out to be nothing,” Nordgren says. “I still remember spending a perfectly starry night out in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for the supposed Camelopardalids meteor ‘storm’ in May 2014 and not seeing a single meteor all night.”

Still, Nordgren says the potential for what could happen is probably worth a look. “It only has to actually happen once for you to see (or miss) the experience of a lifetime. So if it’s clear, I’ll go out. I’m not making a special trip to the desert Southwest, but I’ll hang out in my backyard and see what I can see. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Shooting the Potential Shower

This all brings us to what to do as photographers. I say get the camera ready and get outside.

If you choose that option, Nordgren has some advice: “Use a wide-angle lens to capture a lot of sky. Point upward with something on the horizon in the field of view to give a sense of scale, and just let the camera expose for 10, 20, 40, 90 seconds or more. See what you capture. It takes only one photo to make a night to remember.”

If you want to shoot the meteor shower, download our e-book Great Balls of Fire by clicking the image above.

For even more to strategize such a shoot, see our blog post “How to Photograph a Meteor Shower.” Better yet, read our e-book Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers.

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Boötes the Herdsman

For this particular meteor shower, the radiant will be near the Boötes the Herdsman constellation, which is around the bright orange star Arcturus and not far from the handle of the Big Dipper. To find it, use an app such as Sky Map (Android), Sky Guide (iOS) or Stellarium (ambivalent). Alternatively, use PhotoPills—they just added the Tau Herculids to their meteor shower data, so you can do a full scout like with pretty much any other celestial event. Include the radiant in your composition to get the best chance of capturing a meteor, or to capture a series of exposures for creating a “meteor radiant” image.

The Western Hemisphere (and a small part of West Africa) will be the best place to view the shower (weather-permitting), unless you’re in a midnight-sun or simmer-dim kind of area. Be outside and look up around 1 a.m. EDT, or 10 p.m. PDT.

Again, this event might not be an event at all. If you’re undecided whether to try to witness or photograph the potential shower, here are some pros and cons:

Pros

• If the meteors do show, they could produce a once-in-many-lifetimes experience.

• We’re in a new moon, so lunar conditions are optimal to see any stars that may fall.

Cons

• Though the number of meteors could be high, most are likely to be dim. (Visible and photographable, but not bright like the Perseids.)

• The radiant is high—halfway up from the horizon on the east coast, and nearly overhead on the west. This makes including the landscape in compositions more challenging. (But not impossible.)

More Information

For more about the Tau Herculids, see these great articles:

• “Will the Tau Herculid meteors produce a storm?” (EarthSky)

• “Possible Meteor Outburst on May 30/31?” (American Meteor Society)

• “Shattered comet could produce dazzling meteor shower: How to watch the Tau Herculids” (LiveScience)

• “A meteor shower outburst from a shattered comet may spawn new Tau Herculids display on May 30” (Space)

• “May 31st Could Be the Most Powerful Meteor Storm in Generations, or Nothing at All” (Universe Today)

Show Us What You Get

Will you wish upon some falling stars? If you’re feeling lucky or adventurous and you go out to shoot, we’d love to see your photos. Please share them in the comments section or on our Facebook page, or tag us (@nationalparksatnight) on Instagram.

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Great Balls of Fire, Part 3: How to Process a Meteor Shower Radiant

Welcome to Part 3 of our journey through the how-to of photographing meteor showers:

1. “Using PhotoPills to Scout Meteor Showers,” by Chris Nicholson

2. “How to Photograph a Meteor Shower,” by Matt Hill

3. “How to Process a Meteor Shower Radiant,” by Matt Hill

All of this, plus a guide to gear and a guide to shoot locations, is contained in our brand new PDF e-guide, Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers. To download the whole e-guide, click here:

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So … You’re creating a meteor shower photograph. You’ve scouted in PhotoPills. You’ve shot the shower. Now you have hundreds of images. How do we make that cool composite where all the meteors appear to come from a particular origin in the sky?

Find Your Background

Start by editing one image. It should be the best image. This will be the “base” sky that all the meteors get stacked onto later.

Identify the frame that has the most aesthetically pleasing sky. In my example from Great Sand Dunes National Park, the Milky Way is arcing through the composition. Since there were clouds in all the images, I chose the one that I believed has the best-looking clouds and with the Milky Way leading to the upper right corner of the frame (Figure 1). I marked this image in Lightroom with a Pick flag and a Green color label to make it easy to find later.

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Figure 1. I like these clouds the best.

Perform your edits to taste. I made my edits to accentuate the galaxy gliding across the sky. But then consider backing those off those edits a bit to de-accentuate the sky. In other words, make the sky darker than you normally would, because you will be masking in meteors, and they need to “pop.”

Sync your Develop settings across all the dark-sky images in your meteor series (Figure 2). If you shot into moonrise or sunrise, process those separately for the foreground (ignoring the sky, which you will eventually mask out).

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Figure 2.

Don’t forget to spot/clone out any planes or satellites from your main image (but don’t worry about any of the other images—that would be a waste of time).

Identifying Sky Objects

Here’s a cheat sheet on how to identify the four primary “streak” objects you’ll find in your night sky images. If you want to dive even deeper into this, see my blog post “How to tell the Difference Between Planes, Satellites and Meteors.”

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Plane trails are straight or curved (or both), are usually accompanied by dots (from the wingtip lights) at regular intervals, and they traverse many frames.

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Iridium satellite flares usually taper in/out like a meteor, but traverse more than one frame because they move slower than a meteor. Also, they may not have any notable color. These are becoming considerably less frequent.

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A satellite or the International Space Station creates a straight, very thin line that traverses many frames. No color/tint.

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A meteor appears in only one frame (unless you’re unlucky for it to happen during an interval between frames, which would create a gap in its trail). It can be many different colors or gradients—yellow, red, green, blue. Also will vary greatly in size and intensity.

Find Your Meteors

You could export all the images as layers in Photoshop, but imagine how much that would choke your computer. I have over 300 images from that shoot. It’s easier to export and work with only the ones with meteors. So first spend some time in Lightroom to identify every image that has an actual meteor in it. Some tips:

• Zoom in and around each frame.

• Toggle back and forth between pairs of images while looking for differences. You will eventually train your eyes to see the meteors.

• Make a few passes through the whole series. Do your first pass with the zoom at “to fit screen” to find the dramatic, obvious meteors. Then do a few more subsequent passes at the “fill” zoom setting on different areas of the sky.

Finding all those meteors is time-consuming—possibly the most time-consuming part of this post-processing project. And it’s taxing on your eyes. But persevere! The end is in sight.

As I found mine, I used a Yellow color label (number 7 on the keyboard, Figure 3) to mark each one. I found only 23 frames with meteors out of 325 images. Yes—only 7 percent of my frames captured meteors. And I was running an exposure sequence for over two hours. Lesson: Maximize your chances; keep that sequence going as long as you can.

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Figure 3. My meteor images, yellow-coded.

Also note that each meteor shower has a different potential yield for meteors per hour. (This is part of the info that PhotoPills provides.) This may vary by location, and will certainly vary by the amount of moonlight in the sky. And even if you’re supposed to be witnessing massive activity, your camera angle may not capture what does end up being visible, despite your best scouting efforts. So stay positive, be smart and work with what you get.

Find Your Foreground

You may have shot several options to use as your foreground—some long exposures at a low ISO, some with light painting, some with moonlight, etc. Look through and pick your favorite. I knew pretty much exactly what I was going to use, because I love my first photo from when the moon rose over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Let’s prep the foreground image to make it easier to blend with the other frames.

For my sky image, I had deliberately crushed the blacks and shadows with a gradient mask and range mask to make the ground as dark as possible (Figure 4, left). Why? Because it would be easier to use a selection tool later in Photoshop.

For my foreground image, I did the opposite: I pushed up the whites and highlights in a gradient mask and range mask, and I carefully edited the edge so as not to blur the ground/sky transition (Figure 4, right). I also imagined what this should look like and made the ground edit believable—not too bright, not too warm.

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Figure 4. Crushed blacks in the foreground (left) and crushed highlights in the sky (right), to make masking them out easier in Photoshop later.

Stacking Your Assets

Use the Attribute filter in Lightroom to find all the Yellow-coded photos (or whatever attribute you chose). To do that, press Command-F (Mac) or Control-F (PC), then select Attribute and click on the Yellow rectangle. Select all the Yellow images in Grid view. Cancel out of the filter by clicking None at the top, then also select the edited versions of your background sky image and your foreground/landscape image.

With all those frames selected, from the Lightroom menu choose Edit > Open as Layers in Photoshop (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

Less Ideal, But Less Computer-Stressing Method

If your computer can handle the task, load the images into Photoshop using the method I described above. It will result in the highest-quality final image, albeit one that’s huge (in this case, a 7 GB PSB file). But if you have an older computer or not a lot of scratch-disk space, you may want to instead export all these frames as JPGs (full-resolution) and then load those files into Photoshop layers using Adobe Bridge. You could also use a Photoshop script to load the JPGs as layers. In Photoshop, choose File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack.

Both of those options will stress the computer less, but because JPGs are lossy, this option will be less flexible to edit later.

Editing Your Layers

Time to plug in that Wacom tablet if you have one! Although, a mouse is fine. I actually found it very easy to use a mouse for this with click/shift-click straight-line painting.

Power user tips:

• Save every 10 minutes. Just do it. Losing detailed work will make you cry.

• This will be huge file. Probably bigger than 2 GB, which is the size limit for a PSD. Therefore, you will want to save as a PSB, which is Photoshop’s native large-file format. If you want to be able to see your PSB in Lightroom, make sure you’ve updated your Creative Cloud software since February 2020.

• Give your eyes a rest. Look out the window now and then.

• Organize your layers. Make a layer group (essentially a folder for layers) to hold all the meteor images, and name it “Meteors.” Name your sky layer “Sky” and your foreground layer “Ground.” This will eliminate future confusion.

• Lock your Sky and Ground layers to avoid accidental edits. (Press Control-/, or click the “Lock all” icon above the layers.)

Masking

For each meteor layer, the only image data you want is the meteor itself. Why don’t you want the rest of the sky? Because the stars will be in a different place than in your Sky layer. The sky has only one Vega, etc., and we want to keep it that way. So on each meteor layer, we need to mask out everything except that streak of light.

Here are your steps (for tool locations, see Figure 6):

1. Turn off your Sky and Ground layers.

2. Turn off all the meteor layers except the one you are working on.

3. Click the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel.

4. Press D to reset the foreground color to black and the background color to white.

5. Press B to enable the Brush tool.

6. Press the bracket keys to change the size of the brush to just a tad wider than the widest part of the meteor streak. [ makes the brush smaller and ] makes the brush bigger.

7. Click on the thumbnail for the layer mask (not on the thumbnail for the image layer).

8. Zoom in so the meteor’s path fills your screen.

9. Now paint out the meteor on the mask. I know it’s counterintuitive. Trust me. (You can use the shift-click trick since meteors burn in a straight line: Click once at one end of the meteor streak, then hold Shift on your keyboard and click once at the end of the streak. )

10. Use the brush sizing and feathering to finesse your masking.

11. When you think you have successfully painted out the meteor, invert the layer mask by pressing Command-I (Mac) or Control-I (PC), or from the menu select Image > Adjustments > Invert. I prefer the keyboard shortcut because I use it to flip back and forth to finesse the masking. Try it—most likely you’ll see how convenient it is, too.

12. Look around the whole layer—there may be more than one meteor in each.

13. Optional: Make laser-beam noises when you find another meteor. I did. It’s fun.

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Figure 6.

Rinse and repeat! Go back to step 2 and do this for every meteor layer you have in the Photoshop document (Figure 7).

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Figure 7. All the meteors I found, masked in.

Making the Radiant

It’s magic time!

Alignment

The radiant of the meteor shower is always in motion, as seen from our perspective on earth. Keep this in mind. When you composed, you knew if it was in the frame or not and made good decisions about placement.

In my example, the Perseids were easy since they are so close to Polaris that they do not appear to move much. The Geminids, however, are so far up in the sky you’re not likely to have land and sky in the same composition, even with a 14mm lens. So they will come into your frame from the edge and point to a place not in clear view. And alignment will not be exact.

You’ll see this happen in our next steps:

1. Select all the layers by pressing Command-Option-A (Mac) or Control-Alt-A (PC), or shift-click the first and last layer.

2. On any layer with the Eyeball turned on, Control-click (Mac) or right-click (PC) on the eyeball, then select Show/Hide all other layers.

3. Near the top of the Layers panel, change the Blend Mode to Lighten. You’ll now see the brightest elements of every layer blended together—the stars, the lit foreground and the meteor streaks.

And see? It’s likely that not all your meteors are pointing to the same place.

Note: Any meteor that does not line up with the origin (in this case, the constellation Perseus) is called a “sporadic” (Figure 8). Don’t let those meteors make you think you did anything wrong. They happen. (More on Sporadic meteors here.)

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Figure 8. A sporadic.

Because everything in the universe is in motion, to adjust for this perception error, our layers also need to be “put into motion.”  Specifically, we have to rotate each meteor layer, ideally around a visual anchor in the Sky layer. Lucky for me, Polaris is in my scene. Easy peasy. (If Polaris isn’t in your frame, you’ll just need to do a little more work by eye to line up the rotation correctly.)

If the Radiant is in Your Frame

The most surefire way to get all the meteors pointing toward the radiant is if you actually have the radiant in your composition. (See Figure 9 for tool locations.)

1. Invert the layer mask.

2. Set the layer to 50 percent opacity.

3. Enter the Free Transform mode (Edit > Free Transform or Command/Control-T).

4. Move the center point of the Transform bounding box to just inside Polaris (north)

5. Rotate the layer. You can do this by clicking and dragging outside the corner of the Transform box. But you can control things easier this way: Locate the Rotate box at the top of the screen, and click into it. Now press the up/down-arrow keys until the star points align.

6. When aligned, press Enter twice to lock in the rotation angle as well as your Transform adjustment.

7. Set the layer opacity back to 100 percent.

8. Invert the layer mask again.

9. Repeat for each meteor layer.

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Figure 9.

If that’s a bit too tedious for you, there are two faster (if less precise) ways to accomplish the same task:

1. Use Free Transform when zoomed to fit to screen, move the center point roughly into position without zooming all the way in, and rotate each layer using your eyeballs.

2. Evaluate if you want to do this at all. My first gut reaction without rotating the layers was, “This looks great!” I turned off all the sporadic meteors and called it a day. But then I went back and did things “right” for the sake of perfecting the image for this blog post.

If the Radiant is not in Your Frame

Simply rotate and align each layer until all of the meteors appear to be originating from the same point. Sometimes I put a piece of tape on the wall behind the monitor and eyeball the lines so they all line up with that point. Reminds me of art school and learning about vanishing points.

Dealing with Sporadics

The sporadics might be bothering you. After all, you went through all this work to create an image where scores of meteors are pointing toward the same point in space, just to have a few rogues that point wherever they want (Figure 10).

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Figure 10: Sporadic meteors circled in red. Note they do not point toward Perseus. I removed them.

You have a few options:

• If you only want a “clean” radiant, turn off the layers with the sporadics.

• If you don’t care, leave them on.

• Free transform and rotate/move the sporadics so they look as if they came from the radiant.

It’s your choice. But my choice is not to pretend they all were radiant meteors if they were not. I chose to turn those layers off.

Along the same lines, you may choose to move some meteors that cross over or are too near to each other. It’s your fiction … or not. I chose to rotate each layer to honor the origin of the radiant.

Mask in the Ground and Sky

Your base images (which should be the lowest layers in your Photoshop file) for the sky and ground need to be masked over the meteor stack. Here’s how I did mine:

Photoshop is getting very good at auto-detecting with the Quick Selection tool (W). I set Point Sample to a tolerance of 2, and checked Anti-Alias and Contiguous. Then I clicked and dragged on the sky/ground (both of which we crushed in Lightroom earlier to make the unwanted pixels similar, specifically to ease the masking process now).

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Figure 11.

When I had the selection I wanted (Figure 11), I added a layer mask and inverted it. Voila! Sky and Ground perfection (Figure 12).

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Figure 12. The Sky and Ground layers blended, minus the stacked meteors.

After all this work (and pausing to save many times!), you have a Photoshop document with lots of layers, and it might look something like this:

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Figure 13. Final image. Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. Nikon D750 with a Zeiss Distagon 15mm f/2.8 lens. 17 images at 22 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400, plus a single foreground exposure at 382 seconds, ISO 2000.

Your final steps are to:

1. Save it once more (Command/Control-S).

2. Flatten the layers by choosing Layer > Flatten Image from the menu.

3. From the Menu choose File > Save As and then choose Photoshop from the Format menu to save this file as a PSD. This process should automatically save the file and return it to Lightroom. If the PSD does not appear back in Lightroom, do the following: Navigate to the Library Module. Right-click on the folder containing the meteor images, and choose Synchronize. When prompted, choose to import the new image into Lightroom.

4. Discard the giant layered PSD/PSB when you are totally comfortable that you are done editing it. I suggest giving it at least a week. (If you have giant hard drives and don’t care about gigabytes, feel free to skip this step.)

Wrapping Up

At this point, do whatever you do to celebrate. It’s a major accomplishment—to plan, to shoot and to edit a meteor shower radiant. Good on ya.

And please—please, please, please—if you go through all of this work, share what you’ve done. We’d love to see it. Post in the comments below or on our Facebook page.

Now be sure to download the e-book, Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers, which includes all three blog posts, plus a gear guide and a location guide!

Matt Hill is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. See more about his photography, art, workshops and writing at MattHillArt.com. Follow Matt on Twitter Instagram Facebook.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Great Balls of Fire, Part 2: How to Photograph a Meteor Shower

Welcome to Part 2 of our three-day journey through the how-to of photographing meteor showers:

1. “Using PhotoPills to Scout Meteor Showers,” by Chris Nicholson

2. “How to Photograph a Meteor Shower,” by Matt Hill

3. “How to Process a Meteor Shower Radiant,” by Matt Hill

All of this, plus a guide to gear and a guide to shoot locations, is contained in our brand new PDF e-guide, Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers. To download the whole e-guide, click here:

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How to Photograph a Meteor Shower

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Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. Nikon D750 with a Zeiss Distagon 15mm f/2.8 lens. 17 images at 22 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400, plus a single foreground exposure at 382 seconds, ISO 2000.

It’s amazing to capture a meteor. An accomplishment that makes most of us say, “Yeah!” and fist-pump in the air. But you know what’s even better? Lots of meteors. And all of them zooming out of one spot in the sky.

One meteor can often be problematic, compositionally. One looks like just a bright streak going through the frame, brighter than a plane trail, usually not in a pleasing spot along a line of thirds or along a swirl of the golden spiral. But many meteors all emanating from one place in the heavens? Wow!

So get your biggest memory card(s) and format them, because this could be a lot of photos!

Let’s assume:

• you know where the radiant is, because you used PhotoPills

• you choose a night that has favorable sky conditions (I love the Wunderground app)

Let’s also assume you have the following:

• a high ISO-capable DSLR or mirrorless camera

• freshly charged batteries or an external battery pack such as the TetherTools Case Relay

• a reliable tripod

• an intervalometer or a camera with one built in

You are now ready.

The Scenario

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Our Great Sand Dunes group shooting the shooting stars.

Location

I am going to use a workshop shoot in Great Sand Dunes National Park to illustrate the process. The park is north of Alamosa, Colorado, which unfortunately is a source of light pollution. But the northern view into the crook of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is not only ripe with dark skies, but also offers a beautiful visual contrast between the top of the dunes at 8,660 feet and the mountains at 12,000.

Having visited Great Sand Dunes twice before, I had performed a fair amount of both daytime and nighttime scouting. The first time I failed, and the second I fared much better. This would be the third trip, and the shot I had in mind was rather epic.

Meteor Shower

The peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower on the overnight of August 12 to 13, 2017.

Sky Conditions

We had peak darkness from about 9:30 p.m. until just before 11 p.m. when the moon started to rise behind the mountains and brighten the sky.

Challenges

Ascending 600 feet of sand dunes at 8,000 feet of elevation, with gear, to achieve the view of the mountains over the dunes. Plus the patience to wait out the meteors.

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A lucky first shot. Nikon D750 with a Zeiss Distagon 15mm f/2.8 lens. 22 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Setting Up

I chose a 15mm lens and a vertical orientation for the camera to keep the composition ratio to one-third landscape/dunes and two-thirds sky.

When deciding on a composition, it’s important to confirm the location of the meteor radiant—the place in the sky where all the meteors appear to originate from. The radiant is always near a constellation (not by magic—only because human imagination has seen and named a lot of constellations, so there’s always one nearby). A meteor shower is named for the constellation near its radiant. The Perseids are named such because the meteors appear to originate from the constellation Perseus.

In 2017 PhotoPills didn’t have the Meteor Showers feature, so we did it the old fashioned way: We used an astronomy app to spot Perseus and to see how it would appear to move during the shoot. We set up our cameras facing the direction of the meteor shower radiant, keeping in mind that it would move through the frame (like the rest of the night sky) over the course of the evening.

In Chris’ post yesterday, he walked through how we would have used PhotoPills to plan this photo. In short, here’s the info I would have loved to have at our fingertips that night three years ago:

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From left to right: Path of the meteor radiant, plus moon shadow angles and times. The same, plus the Milky Way. Nearing the end of a usable dark sky. Moonrise—the end of the shoot … or not?

I placed the radiant near the center of my composition. Again, constellations appear to move during the night, which means the radiant center travels through your composition. So definitely plan for that movement. If you are not careful, the radiant may drift out of your frame. Fortunately, the Perseids are located not too far from Polaris. So, from the earthbound point of view, everything was pretty much rotating around a close fixed point, making shooting (and later, post-processing) easier.

I chose to include a generous portion of sky to maximize meteor captures, plus some of the landscape for context. My framing deliberately included some featureless foreground: the utterly dark dunes. We encouraged everyone in the workshop shooting with us to stay behind a line in the sand (so to speak) so as not to get footprints in others’ foregrounds.

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The foreground is dark—but we’ll deal with that later.

You may ask, “If the foreground is dark, why are you including so much of it?” Well, it’s awfully hard to see meteors when the moon is in the sky. That causes an opposite problem: dark landscapes. But we still, ideally, want our images to have artful foreground that provides both context and rich details.

How do we do that? We have a few choices:

1. Set up during the end of the day and shoot some twilight images. Then, do not move your camera. Not a millimeter. When darkness descends, shoot your meteor shower images and blend them with your daylit foreground in post.

2. Light paint your foreground for the beginning and end frames of your meteor shower sequence. In post, blend your best light painting with your meteor radiant.

3. Wait for the moon to scoot around and light up the landscape from a right angle. This is what I chose, and I urged the attendees to do this too. It takes patience. But knowing your goal helps.

No matter what, be sure to give your skies some context and plan for your foreground to be composed and lit well.

Setting Up the Rest

OK. Next we do the bread-and-butter night photography stuff:

1. Focus.

2. Compose.

3. Perform a high ISO test.

4. Check everything at 100 percent on the back of your camera. Carefully. Especially look at your focus. Four times. Not joking.

5. Make sure your camera is set to capture in RAW.

6. Choose your color balance.

7. Lock down everything on your tripod.

8. Put a fresh battery in your camera, or plug in to an external battery.

9. Determine a good shutter speed using the NPF Rule. (More on that later.)

10. Choose an ISO that complements the scene and your camera. For my Nikon Z 6, it’s usually ISO 6400, but I know Gabe really digs pushing that camera to 12,800.

11. Shoot as wide open as your lens permits without coma.

12. Connect your intervalometer and set its program as needed. Your interval between images should be 1 second, which is as short as almost any intervalometer can effectively go.

Shooting for Sharp Stars

Why is the shutter speed so important? You want to have exposure times that create star points, not short star smudges. Your sky should be tack-sharp, so I suggest calculating a shutter speed using the NPF Rule.

But when you do, calculate the ideal NPF exposure in PhotoPills using “Default,” but not “Accurate.” For example, these days I often shoot with a Nikon Z 6 and a Laowa 15mm f/2.8 lens. When I run that combination through the NPF calculator, the “Default” shutter speed is 18.62 seconds, while “Accurate” is 9.31 seconds.

A 9.31-second exposure will create amazingly sharp starts, but it is also short enough to increase the chance of cutting off meter tails. 9.31 seconds + 1 second delay in the intervalometer = 10.31-second exposure cycles. That means the shutter will be closed for 9.7 percent of the total exposure time of the final composite image.

An 18.62-second exposure is more likely to capture a meteor in its entirety—its blackout time during intervals will account for only 5.2 percent of the cumulative exposure of the series. I like those odds better.

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NPF Rule shutter speeds for the Nikon Z 6 when used with a Laowa 15mm f/2.8 lens, at the “Default” (left) and “Accurate” (right) settings. (Forget about the 500 Rule. It’s two generations old—enough to consider obsolete.)

You might decide that you don’t mind missing a few meteors because you want to make a magnificent mural print for your wall and the pointier stars will look better when blown up. I would agree. But photography is always a game of deciding which variables to adjust to match your goals. My goal was maximum meteor strikes.

Also consider this: You might capture only 10, 20 or 40 meteors in hundreds of photos over a few hours of shooting. My final in this example has only 16 meteors originating from the radiant. Shooting at 9.31 seconds, with more frequent 1-second intervals, may have reduced that count by quite a few.

The Shoot

So now what?

Set your intervalometer (or camera software or app) to start a sequence of images that begins right after twilight ends (or right when the meteor shower starts to pick up). Also, base your start time around when the moon might be rising or setting, if applicable. In my case, in Great Sand Dunes, I wanted to keep shooting until a little after the moon rose at 11:04 p.m.

If you want to run your exposures until dawn, I suggest returning to your camera during twilight to adjust your exposures manually as the sun approaches the horizon, because they will change quickly. But consider this: Why should the foreground look like daytime when meteors are visible only on the darkest of nights?

Go! Let it rip. Don’t move the camera. Don’t walk in front of it. Maybe light paint the first few exposures. But then sit back (maybe on a portable chair) and enjoy the meteor shower with your naked eyes or go for a safe hike in the darkness.

Waiting out the long series of exposures.

At Great Sand Dunes, I let the exposures run for just over two hours. Yup. Made 325 RAW files. For a wedding photographer, that’s no big deal, but for a night photographer, that might usually be three or four night’s work.

I put together the 325 images in a time lapse, so you can see (in an accelerated way) how the meteor shower looked in person:

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Patience pays off. Moonlight sculpts the dunes for my lit-foreground frame. Nikon D750 with a Zeiss Distagon 15mm f/2.8 lens. 382 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 2000.

Foreground Exposure

My final step was to expose for the moonlit foreground and mix in some light painting.

I wanted the moon to be scraping over the dunes perpendicular to my scene. As soon as the moon was about to do what I wanted to capture, I stopped the intervalometer to cease the meteor series. I quickly shot another high ISO test to determine a good exposure, then dropped down to ISO 2000 and made a 382-second frame for a higher-quality image of the sand.

I didn’t choose to make an even longer, even higher-quality exposure because the moon, and thus the shadows, were moving quickly, which made the dunes look flat. I could have also walked into or around the scene and performed some artful light painting to accent the landscape, but I liked how the moonlight looked, so I packed up the setup and moved on for the night.

Post-Production

Congratulations! You photographed a whole meteor shower! Believe it or not, that was the easy part. Now you have to process it. … Buckle up! Tomorrow we go to the digital darkroom.

Now move on to “How to Process a Meteor Shower Radiant.” And be sure to download the e-book, Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers.

Matt Hill is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. See more about his photography, art, workshops and writing at MattHillArt.com. Follow Matt on Twitter Instagram Facebook.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Great Balls of Fire, Part 1: Using PhotoPills to Scout Meteor Showers

If you want to photograph meteor showers, 2020 is your year.

Why? Doesn’t each calendar comprise the same meteor showers? Don’t the Quadrantids happen every winter, and Eta Aquariids every spring, and the Delta Aquariids each summer and the Leonids each fall?

Yes, they do. But not every meteor-shower photography opportunity is created equal. The variable is a rather large obstacle in the night sky: the moon. The brighter it is, the fewer meteors we can see, and thus the fewer meteors we can photograph. In short, a new moon usually makes for a better experience when shooting shooting stars.

That brings us back to why 2020 is such a fine year for doing this: Of the nine major meteor showers, three will peak during a new moon, including the busiest shower of them all, the Geminids in December. The same conditions will be available for the Leonids in November, as well as the Lyrids … this week!

(The summer Perseids won’t be too shabby either. They’ll happen under a 44.7 percent moon, but with a few hours before the waning gibbous rising, they should be spectacular nonetheless.)

This is why we’re bringing you our three-part definitive guide to photographing meteor showers:

1. “Using PhotoPills to Scout Meteor Showers,” by Chris Nicholson

2. “How to Photograph a Meteor Shower,” by Matt Hill

3. “How to Process a Meteor Shower Radiant,” by Matt Hill

Moreover, all of this, plus a guide to gear and a guide to shoot locations, is contained in our brand new PDF e-guide, Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers. To download the whole e-guide, click here:

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Using PhotoPills to Scout Meteor Showers

Can you plan meteor shower photography without PhotoPills? Sure! But why would you, when the app makes planning a lot more convenient and a lot more precise?

The Meteor Showers feature is one of the newest in PhotoPills. It does an excellent job of collating the myriad and complex data points required to plan and execute a good meteor shower shoot:

• dates of meteor showers and their peaks

• the location of the shower radiant (where the meteors appear to originate in the sky)

• the number of meteors per hour

• the moon phase

Moreover, PhotoPills gives you all this information accurate to any position on earth, for any meteor shower until 2032. (If you’re planning shoots further than that, kudos for your enthusiasm and confidence.)

To walk through the different settings and how to use them to plan a meteor shower shoot, we’re going to pretend to go back in time.

On August 12, 2017, my fellow NPAN instructor Matt Hill, along with a group of our workshop attendees, hiked into Great Sand Dunes National Park with the goal of creating a night-long image stack of the Perseids streaking over the landscape. The photograph he created (Figure 1) was so on-point that it’s become our go-to example of how to shoot meteors. (In fact, it’s the image he’ll use to demonstrate how to photograph and process a meteor shower image in the next two blog posts in this series.)

PhotoPills released their Meteor Showers feature just last fall. But we can look back in time (the app’s pertinent data is retroactive to 2010) to see how he would have used PhotoPills to plan this shot.

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Figure 1: Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. Nikon D750 with a Zeiss Distagon 15mm f/2.8 lens. 17 images at 22 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400, plus a single foreground exposure at 382 seconds, ISO 2000 for the landscape after moonrise. © 2017 Matt Hill.

Working in PhotoPills

First things always come first: Open the app, then tap Meteor Showers (Figure 2). The pill opens and presents you with the data for any meteor shower activity today. That’s fine if you’re shooting tonight, but if you’re scouting for a shoot in the future, you can navigate to any shower of any year over a two-decade period by tapping on Calendar (Figure 3).

You can select the year by tapping at the top—in this case, to go back in time, I tap 2019 to move the timeline to the right, then I tap 2018 to move it again, and finally I tap 2017.

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Figure 2.

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Figure 3.

The view that comes up lists the nine major meteor showers along with lots of condensed information:

• dates the showers are active

• dates they peak

• diagram of the constellation each shower appears to radiate from

• the “quality” of each shower for your shoot location (based on moonlight, position of the radiant, etc.)

• number of meteors you can expect to see per hour

• illumination percentage of the moon

For example, in Figure 4, for the 2017 Perseids we can see the following: It radiated from Perseus, had a below-average quality, lasted from July 17 to August 24, peaked on August 12 (the night Matt was shooting—yay, Matt!), had an expected density of 33.8 meteors per hour, and was happening under a 70.2 percent moon.

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Figure 4.

The next step is to dive deeper into the data by tapping “Perseids” (Figure 5). There you can see all the info above, plus some more, such as the fact that the meteors originated from the Swift-Tuttle comet.

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Figure 5.

When you tap the arrow next to “Peak at your location,” you’ll open the Info screen, where you’ll see a host of other information that will affect how and when you choose to shoot, such as the times for sunset, moonset, and visibility and orientation of the galactic core.

Perhaps upon seeing this information you’re curious if the nights before or after would be better for the shoot. At the top (Figure 6), tapping < and > brings you backward and forward one day at a time, and all the pertinent data changes. To change by minutes or hours, swipe inside the box between those arrows.

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Figure 6.

However, there’s one problem with all the info you’ve seen in these screen shots so far. It’s not for Great Sand Dunes National Park. Rather, it’s information for shooting in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I’m sitting as I write this blog post. That doesn’t do me much good for planning a shot 2,200 miles away in southern Colorado.

Fortunately, there’s a way to change that:

1. Tap Settings at the top right, then tap on the GPS coordinates (which, by default, should indicate your precise spot on the globe at the moment you tap).

2. From there you can enter the coordinates of your shoot location (if you know them), or enter the name or address of the location in the search field at the top. (If you can’t enter text, disable the Autoupdate switch in that dialog.)

3. Select the correct option displayed below the search box (Figure 7).

4. Tap Done (on an iOS device) or the back-arrow (on an Android).

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Figure 7.

Now all the data will reflect the chosen shoot location rather than your current position.

So, time-traveling with Matt we can now see (Figure 8) that:

• The sun will set at 7:58 p.m.

• The moon will rise at 11:03 p.m.

• The galactic core will be visible from 9:37 p.m. to 1:42 a.m..

• The shower will peak at 11:04 p.m. with 36.9 meteors per hour.

• At that time, he can expect to actually see 7.5 of those meteors per hour.

• The shower will be radiating from an azimuth of 31.6 degrees and an elevation of 21.7 degrees.

• Minor remainders from other meteor showers (e.g., the Delta Aquarids, which are past peak) might show up.

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Figure 8.

Also on the Info screen is a graph with a horizontal line and two curves that dip above and below (Figure 9). The horizontal line indicates the horizon, the blue curve indicates the moon and the gray curve indicates the meteor shower radiant. The curves indicate how far above or below the horizon the moon and radiant will be at any given time (indicated at the bottom of the graph). The background of the graph is gray, with darker gray indicating twilight and black indicating dark hours. For ideal shooting conditions, look for a time during darkness when the moon is below the horizon and the radiant above.

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Figure 9.

At the bottom of the graph is a gray bar chart that combines the data about light conditions (moon and sun visibility) with the expected rate of meteors (Figure 10). This identifies the times when you’re most likely to see the most shooting stars. It’s essentially a curve indicating how good the show will be at different times of night—the higher the gray, the better. In Matt’s case, we can see that the best window to photograph the most meteors in the darkest conditions was between 9:30 and 11 p.m.

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Figure 10.

Swiping the graph will change the time of day, and in the section below you can see how the radiant’s azimuth and elevation change, as well as the expected rate of visible meteors.

Putting the Data to Use

All of that data sounds wonderful, right? Well … you can be forgiven if you’re thinking, “Yeah, but that’s a lot of numbers to sort through.” You’re right. And, in fact, there are even more numbers and technical names for them that I didn’t even mention.

So why is PhotoPills so great for planning a meteor shower shoot? Because it will instantly turn all those numbers into intuitive visual aids, either right on the scene in front of you, for scouting in the field, or right on a map, for scouting at home.

Scouting in the Field

For pretty much every PhotoPills feature I employ, the most powerful tool within that feature is Augmented Reality (AR), which uses your device’s camera to project a map of celestial events right onto the scene in front of you. This allows you to stand in the spot you want to shoot at night and see exactly, for example, where the moon will rise on the horizon, where the Milky Way will tilt across the landscape, and yes, where stars will shoot out of the sky.

During the end of the day, when Matt could still see where he was walking and setting up the camera, he would have used PhotoPills to see exactly where the radiant of Perseids would be at the time he wanted to shoot (Figure 11).

Using that visual information on your device’s display is invaluable for deciding where to set up your tripod, where to point your camera, what lens to use, and how to compose your photograph. In the figure, you can see that the Perseids radiant would rise above the horizon at about 9:30 p.m. and track in an arc above the distant mountains. You can also see that the radiant is aligning nicely with the Milky Way—so, bonus!

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Figure 11.

Doing this is easy. From the Meteor Showers Info screen, tap AR at the bottom (Figure 12). This will engage your device’s camera. PhotoPills uses the device’s location and compass information to know where you’re pointing, and will lay the sky map right on top of what you’re looking at. In this case, part of what it shows you will be the meteor shower.

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Figure 12.

When you open the AR view, it will default to the current date and time. To see what will happen later, just drag your finger on the screen. You’ll see the sky map move across the scene as you go forward and back by minutes and hours. If you want to go forward a full day, just tap the right of the screen; to go back a day, tap on the left.

As you turn and move your device around the scene, watch the display. Look for the heavy line that indicates the path of the radiant through the sky, with points along the line indicating the time the radiant will appear in different places. Also look for the icon with the meteor shower’s name. This icon will tell you precisely where the radiant will be at the time indicated at the top left of the AR screen.

Back in 2017, all Matt would have needed to do was find the Perseids on the sky map, drag the icon to where he wanted to see the radiant in his composition, note what time it would be there (a little before 11 p.m., in Figure 11) and how it would move through the scene, then set up and shoot.

Scouting from Home

Planning a shot when you’re on location looks easy enough, right? But what if you want to plan ahead of time, when you’re still at home day-dreaming about night-shooting a meteor shower?

That’s when you want to work in the PhotoPills map—or in, as they call it, the Planner pill.

To open this feature, start at the main screen and tap on the very first option, which is labeled Planner (Figure 13).

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Figure 13.

Locate and tap on the Settings button (Figure 14). Here you can enable and disable different layers of information, including for the sun, twilight, Milky Way and so on. For this example, I’ve turned off everything except the Moon and Meteor Shower layers. To return to the map, tap Done (iOS) or the back-arrow (Android).

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Figure 14.

To make your map show your desired shoot location, tap Load at the bottom, then enter your spot in the text box (in this case, Great Sand Dunes, Figure 15). Tap on the location name in the search results, and PhotoPills will bring you there on the map. Now you can pinch, zoom, drag and swipe to get to the exact spots you’d like to scout. Press and hold where you’d like to stand for your photo, and PhotoPills will drop a red pin. That pin will then become the center point for all your moon and meteor data.

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Figure 15.

In Figure 16, you can see all that information in graphic form. The teal and purple lines show where the moon will rise and set, respectively. The straight gray line shows the meteor shower’s radiant position at the chosen time. The gray, curved, dotted line shows how the radiant will move throughout the night in relative position to the ground.

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Figure 16.

In order to save that work for future reference (including once you finally get into the field to shoot):

1. Tap Save at the bottom.

2. Tap Plan.

3. Tap New Plan.

4. Type a name for your plan.

5. Tap Enter.

Now you can call up that plan by name whenever you’d like to reference it—such as when you find a time machine to return to good ol’ 2017.

Executing the Shoot

That’s how we can use PhotoPills to plan a meteor shower shoot. Tomorrow, Matt will discuss how he executed the rest! And then afterward, he’ll show how he process it. Stay tuned. …

Now move on to “Part 2: How to Photograph a Meteor Shower.” And be sure to download the e-book, Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers.

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT