A couple of Perseids from 2025
• 2 min read
On the night of 12 August 2025, the peak of the Perseids meteor shower, I decided to sit in my garden to try and catch a glimpse of the spectacle. I’d never done it before, so I had no idea what to expect. What I’d read online before said that they’d be faint and you need to let your eyes adjust to be able to see them.
But, around 15 minutes after I settled into my seat, I saw an exceptionally bright streak of light across the north-eastern sky. It was the best thing I’d ever seen. I stayed outside for some time longer, and I saw some fainter meteors, but nothing close to the awesomeness of the first one that I saw.
Still, I was so impressed that a couple of nights later, on 14 August 2025, I set up my camera in my garden to record some continuous video in the hope that I would catch some meteors on film. It was past the peak of the shower, so I knew there would be fewer meteors in the sky. I’d never tried to do anything similar, so I picked some settings that my camera is happy to record at for long periods of time and wouldn’t fill up my memory card too quickly. I hadn’t thought too much about battery life, though, and my camera ran out of battery after an hour.
Not to worry, I had some footage captured. The next day, I loaded it on to my computer and realised that I had an hour of 4k footage of the night sky to review. I wasn’t having much luck doing that, so I parked reviewing it for a while.
Earlier this month, I finally bothered to have a proper look at the footage. Somewhat to my surprise, I found that I had captured two apparent meteors.
Here’s the first:
That one was fairly low in the sky. (I’m not sure that its path is actually correct for a Perseid, but I suppose it doesn’t matter…)
Here’s the second:
The bright shimmering dot near the bottom of the clip is the double star Almach
That one was higher in the sky, at an altitude of about 34°, and lines up nicely with the expected radiant.
Neither of those two meteors are anywhere near as impressive as the first one I saw on the night of 12 August. Still, I managed to get something on video – if the skies are clear again this year, I’ll be trying again (and have more of a clue about what I’m doing).
(Also, that’s three posts about space in a row now 😆. I’m pretty sure that I’m out of space-related content, at least for now…)
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