2018 Edition of the Perseids Did Not Exactly Wow Me

On paper the 2018 Perseids Meteor Shower promised to be a good show on its peak night of August 12-13 in the Cedar Rapids Iowa metro area. Clear skies were forecast and the moon would not interfere during the early morning hours before dawn. As it turned out though, drifting smoke from the large wildfires out west created a milky-hazy effect aloft, humidity on this night was near 100% and of course there was the ever-present light pollution factor. Be that as it may, I set up around 3:20 am CDT in Lowe Park just north of Marion, looking northeast. Illuminated at right is the park's amphitheater. The image above is a capture from 3:31 am, when my brightest meteor streak occurred. It is a composite photograph containing another meteor streak (left) added from 3:41 am. My Nikon D7200 DSLR (with Tokina 11-16mm lens) settings were: 13 second exposure at f/2.8, ISO 640 and 14mm focal length. The attached remote cord was locked so my camera took continuous shots. After 3:41 am the sky went into pure drought mode. I never saw another photographable bright meteor again before I finally packed it up and went home around 4:20 am.

Continuous camera shooting allowed me to create a star trails image in StarStax2, seen above. The image is a stack of 249 images with a time duration from 3:23-4:17 am. Air temperature was a comfortable 64 degrees and bugging from insects was nearly non-existant.