Perseids report

By DAN ROBINSON
Editor/Photographer

My brother and I stayed out until 4AM attempting to shoot the Perseid meteor shower, with not much to show for the effort. We decided to move from the rooftop vantage point due to excessive exposure from the downtown city lights, opting for a spot outside of Benson about 20 miles to the south. The light pollution was present there also (hard to avoid around here) but a little better than near Raleigh. I continued shooting with two video cameras and my old Pentax K1000 (loaded with 800-speed print film). With my brother shooting with his 5D, we had four cameras on four different areas of sky to maximize the chances of success.

The shower itself was not too bad in terms of the number of visible meteors, but at least from our vantage point, we didn't see (or capture) the big, bright, pulsing fireballs that others had seen around the world. Ironically, the only clear meteor image I captured was with my low-light-challenged HD video camera, back while we were still set up on the roof of the house.

The Perseid shower is a prolonged one, lasting nearly a month from late July to late August. It only peaked last night, meaning that there should be more to come during the next few days. However, barring any reports of a 2001 Leonid-like show, I doubt I'll pull another all-nighter for them.