Murphy’s Law

Last Thursday night was the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower. The sky was reasonably clear, so I stayed out for about ninety minutes at around midnight. I saw a number of Perseids, but nowhere near the 60 per hour that had been forecast. I did see an Iridium flare, which was rather satisfying.

I was also trying to photograph the meteors. This involved having the camera on a tripod, pointing the camera at the sky and taking a succession of 30 second exposures. By Murphy’s Law, the camera was never pointing at a part of the sky where a meteor happened to appear during an exposure…

Not everyone was as unlucky. Here’s a great shot from reway2007: