Went out with friends and family last night, or I should say early this morning, to try to catch the show in the sky -- the annual Perseid Meteor Shower.  While it wasn't as spectacular as the Leonids that I saw about 10 years ago, we still saw a few "fireballs" that make the kids oooh and aaah.  Since we had two cars full of people and young kids, we didn't drive to far out of the city, but we were able to find a secluded spot on the side of a mountain pass to block out some of the lights from the city.

I set out to catch some falling stars with the M9, but didn't end up with any in my shots.  I did search online for some of the suggested settings for an event like this:

• wide angle lens (I brought the Zeiss 25mm Biogon)
• high ISO 1000 or above (I tried both 800 and 400 with the M9)
• fast aperture to let in the lights (I actually tried various apeture from f/2.8 to f/8)
• about 10-30 seconds of exposure time

I also found a hidden self-timer mode with the M9 which will allow me to expose it for as long as I want:

• in the menu, set the self-timer to 2 or 12 seconds and turn the camera power switch to the timer mode
• turn the shutter dial to "B" for bulb-mode
• press the shutter once to open the shutter, and in the viewfinder, you'll see a counter starts to count
• press the shutter lightly again to closer the shutter

What I've learned was that even for a 30 seconds exposure, you can easily see the stars' movement when viewing the files at 100%.  But since the meteors disappear so quickly, you pretty much have to be lucky to capture any with a short exposure time.  So... while I failed to catch any shooting stars... I still got a few nice captures of the night sky, and everyone had great fun :)