Gotcha! The distinctive colour change as the meteor comes through the atmosphere can clearly be seen here as well as a pair of terminal bursts as the Perseid meteoroid finally meets its end.

Here are two bright Perseid fireballs that fell during a spike in activity between 1:30 and 2:30 o'clock MDT on August 12, 2009.

The first one (Perseid 47) is a 30-sec exposure taken at 1:48 am MDT. The second one (Perseid 94 - the brightest of the night) was captured at 2:14 am MDT. Both were taken with a Fuji Finepix Pro S2 digital camera set at ISO 400 with a 16 mm wide angle lens at f2.8.

Moonlight enhances the scene looking out over Stagecoach Lake near Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

I started to look for Perseids at around 9:30 p.m. on August 11. Milky Way and long sparkling meteors made a dazzling scenery. Later on the rising Moon slowly washed away Milky Way and most meteors.

NASA astronomer Bill Cooke operates a pair of all-aky meteor cameras separated by 100 miles--one in Alabama and one in Georgia. This Moon-bright Perseid fireball was captured by both cameras on August 10th. Using simple principles of parallax and triangulation, he was able to estimate the meteor's height (100 km), velocity (59 km/s), and its 3D trajectory through the atmosphere. Stay tuned for more of these as the shower unfolds.

I have had my camera out all night the last two nights with a fisheye lens and have only been able to capture a handful of dim meteors. Most of the meteors I have seen are dim and fast and with The Moon...they are difficult to photograph. I did catch this magnitude -8 Lightning Bug Fireball that was outshone only by the Moon. The lightning bug must have been just a inch above the lens. The 2nd pic is a dim Perseid Meteor from early this morning.

Photo details: Canon Digital Rebel XT, ISO 1600, F3.5, 1 min exposure.