Perseids and Imposters

Between 3 and 4 AM on Aug 13, I watched for Perseid meteors from my backyard. Along the light pollution theme, I'm glad to say faint meteors are still visible from my community, but barely.

This photo shows a meteor from last night:

...but I can't claim it as a Perseid. The original wide field image shows that it is an interloper, coming from a different direction than the Perseids (which radiate from Perseus):

A Perseid is in the following photo. The constellation of Perseus is in the lower left and the meteor is in the lower right, however, Blogger's image compression erased the meteor trail, so I've added a closeup below.

I was photographing with a 28mm lens at f4 and ISO of 400. Exposure times varied between 30 and 60 seconds. I will try again tonight using a faster setting, e.g., F2.8 and perhaps shorter exposure times. The faster setting will make any meteors brighter, but I'll need to user shorter exposure times to minimize the sky glow. The disadvantage of shorter exposure times is that I may miss meteors in the time between exposures.

jg