{"id":42991,"date":"2026-11-15T08:22:25","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T13:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=42991"},"modified":"2026-11-15T08:22:25","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T13:22:25","slug":"a-grain-of-salt-and-a-bit-of-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/11\/a-grain-of-salt-and-a-bit-of-optimism\/","title":{"rendered":"A grain of salt and a bit of optimism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I probably should have been on this sooner, but the Leonids meteor shower is expected to peak in the early morning hours of November 17th<\/sup> – technically, tomorrow night into the morning. This is one of the more prominent and active showers, but that all depends on your definitions – and a bit of history.<\/p>\n

The thing is, meteor showers are unpredictable. Like weather reports, predicting them mostly relies on past experience, but it’s haphazard at best, and I’ll be blunt:<\/strong> only one prediction of ‘serious’ activity actually came to pass in my experience, and that was the Leonids in 2001, which was spectacular. Every attempt since, for more than just the Leonids (but that one experience a quarter-century ago prompted me to always try the Leonids) has been disappointingly slow and sparse. That said, you’ll see nothing if you’re not out there looking.<\/p>\n

According to Universe Today<\/em><\/a>, the Leonids have a 33-year ‘peak’ cycle, and this year isn’t one of them;<\/strong> the last was in 1999, so we could (if we’re optimistic) expect a serious show in 2032. Then again, the big show I witnessed was two years after that last ‘peak,’ so…<\/p>\n

We’re also not limited to that ‘peak’ time frame, either, since you might see something for several days before and after, but true enough, you’ll probably see more in the wee hours of the morning, partially because that’s when the Earth passes through the center of the path of comet 55P\/Tempel-Tuttle – the source of the debris that makes most meteor showers is always a comet, though they can come sporadically from other sources. And partially because after midnight, the night sky for any location is now facing forward on Earth’s orbit, so more like driving into a snowstorm. And partially because the crescent moon will have set by then.<\/p>\n

So, go try it out. At times past, I’ve had suggestions about camera settings to capture meteors, but even those were inadequate to snag the ones I knew<\/em> were in the frame, so right now, I’d suggest wide open aperture, the highest ISO that doesn’t produce shit results (usually two stops below the camera’s maximum, without<\/em> ‘expansion’ or enhancement or whatever your camera might offer,) and keep the exposures relatively brief so that the residual light and star trails don’t overwhelm the frame. And then hope for a brilliant fireball. More than one camera is better, too, because it increases the amount of sky you’ll be able to capture at any given time, and from experience, the bright and long meteors are notorious for appearing someplace you’re not aimed (which is the majority of the sky, because there’s only so wide the field of view can go.)<\/p>\n

And if you capture something, come back here and gloat, because you know my<\/em> past history<\/a> with these…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I probably should have been on this sooner, but the Leonids meteor shower is expected to peak in the early morning hours of November 17th – technically, tomorrow night into the morning. This is one of the more prominent and active showers, but that all depends on your definitions – and a bit of history. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,3],"tags":[990,991,189,6597],"class_list":["post-42991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-photo","tag-leonids","tag-meteor-shower","tag-night-sky-photography","tag-time-exposure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42993,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42991\/revisions\/42993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}