19/08/2026
PERSEIDS OVER WEXFORD
After finishing the solar eclipse sequence earlier that afternoon, we had dinner at the beach and once it got dark enough it was time for the Perseids.
The Milky Way was rising directly over the ocean. I knew the Perseid radiant was in the opposite direction, but decided to shoot this way because there was very little light pollution over the ocean. I really liked the idea of having the Milky Way rising from the horizon with the meteors crossing the sky.
For this image, I used two cameras.
The first was my Canon 6D with a 15mm lens, shooting 15-second exposures at ISO 1600 and f/2.8. It ran for around three hours, and this setup captured all the meteors you see in the final image.
The second was Canon R6 with a 16mm lens, shooting four-minute exposures at ISO 1250 and f/4. It was mounted on Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i and used to capture the Milky Way.
For the Milky Way, I used my usual workflow in Sequator and Photoshop. The meteor images were processed separately. Manually aligned and blended all the meteor frames together first, making sure their positions were correct, then combined the finished meteor image with the final Milky Way image from the R6.
For the foreground, I used the R6 at 16mm with a separate exposureS of myself with the light on, using 15-second exposures at ISO 2500.
And for milky way core i was using Leviathan filter, absolutely amazing peace of equipment!
I wanted to take a few more foreground exposures, but then the sea fog started rolling in. You can see it coming across the right-hand side of the image. Before long, everything was covered in moisture and the scene became completely foggy, so I packed away the equipment and went back to the tent.
A long night outside, but definitely worth staying up for.
