A quick guide to enjoying and photographing the Tears of San Lorenzo (even when the Moon eclipses them)

August has begun, and with it come three rituals that have become a fixture in the Spanish landscape: mass vacations, crowded beaches, and meteor showers on summer nights, led by the world-famous Perseids . However, 2025 won't make things any easier, as the early morning of the Perseids' peak, from August 12th to 13th, will coincide with a nearly 86% full moon, illuminating the sky for most of the night and stealing much of the show, for observers and photographers alike.

Does this mean we'll be without shooting stars this summer? No, not at all. However, we'll have to move up the date and synchronize it with the lunar calendar: we need to change course and focus on this very weekend, extending until Tuesday the 5th, since we have three active meteor showers overhead these days.

Specifically, they are the Delta Aquariids , the Alpha Capricornids, and, in the background, the Perseids. The first two are now reaching their peak and, together, add up to just over twenty meteors per hour: a considerable figure considering showers considered "minor" compared to the media hype of the Perseids. The peak of activity occurred in the early hours of July 31, with 23 meteors per hour, but the activity expected for this weekend is around eighteen meteors every sixty minutes and concentrates around four in the morning. There's still time to go and capture them!

Plus, the moon sets at 1 a.m., which means we have five hours of dark skies—a luxury that will become less and less as the week progresses and the hours without moonlight decrease.

This year's strategy, therefore, consists of changing the script a little: instead of betting everything on the canonical night of August 12-13, it is better to spread the luck among several night outings starting today, when we have the three radiants (Aquarius, Capricorn and, to a lesser extent, Perseus) sharing the sky and throwing the dust of their comets almost in unison.

And from now until mid-August, we'll see meteors almost every night thanks to these three showers, even if they come from different bodies and orbits, until the lunar glow dazzles the scene starting on the 11th.

The Perseids originate from the comet Swift-Tuttle and have their radiant in the constellation of Perseus, the Delta Aquariids are associated with the comet 1911 L1 Swan, radiating from Aquarius, between south and southeast, while the Alpha Capricornids originate from Capricorn, very close to its Aquarian neighbor.

At this point, the key question arises: where should we aim our lens, or simply our gaze, if we want to enjoy the spectacle at its best? The position of the radiant determines the quantity and path of the meteors, so if we frame directly toward it, a greater number of trails will emerge from the same point and travel shorter distances, a perfect resource for obtaining an image that shows how we rotate with the Universe. If, on the other hand, we move the radiant out of the frame, we will obtain fewer trails but with longer trails, which will be distributed in a certain order throughout the frame. Quantity versus length: two equally valid aesthetics, two poetic ways of narrating the same shower. Everything else depends on the imagination... and on the clouds respecting the plan.

It's pure visual language: if you aim at the radiant, you'll get a greater number of meteors with short trails, and if you aim elsewhere, you'll get fewer meteors but with much longer trails. Both options are valid, both are poetic. I recommend you choose intentionally and imaginatively what you'd like to photograph. Everything else is just praying for a clear sky.

For those who simply want to observe, I recommend lying down facing southeast to south as soon as night falls, lemonade in hand, and letting the magic do its work: this is where Aquarius and Capricorn meet, and with them, the greatest density of flashes. If you're a photographer, I suggest pointing your wide-angle lens south-southwest until 2:30 a.m., because with a bit of luck, you'll be able to capture slightly longer meteors near the galactic center of our Milky Way, until it sets below the horizon. At that point, you can rotate the lens south and keep the intervalometer shooting continuously until dawn, thus maximizing the photographic opportunities the sky offers us on these nights.

In this direction, it could also be very interesting, as the Aquariids will appear to be 'shooting' meteors at the Capricornids (and vice versa), and it will not be unusual for the latter to include the famous fireballs for which they are known: large fragments left behind by comet 169P/NEAT, capable of igniting real fireballs.

If you need help finding your way around, it's best to use apps like PhotoPills or Stellarium, as both will show you the exact position of the radiants in the night sky in real time. Just point your phone's camera at the sky, and their augmented reality modes will do the rest. PhotoPills adds useful extras for astrophotographers: customized hyperfocal calculations, exposure times for your equipment, and more.

Whatever your plan, planning makes all the difference. If you want the highest success rate on the night you decide to go stargazing, knowing in advance where the meteors will fall and how long the period of absolute darkness will last can make the difference between the comfortable victory of returning home with a good experience and better photos, or the disappointment of being left without any. Even so, don't rule out tradition: go out on the night of the 12th in a festive spirit, enjoy the summer atmosphere, and when the Moon dominates with its impressive brilliance, you'll have the peace of mind of knowing that you'd already had your fill of meteors earlier in the month.

Don't forget that on that day, the moon will rise around 11:15 p.m., which still leaves us a small one-hour window to observe the peak of the Perseids in total darkness. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.

That said, the rest of the information you need to enjoy meteor shower nights remains the same: look for dark skies, distance from streetlights, a blanket, a thermos, and a headlamp with a red and white light. Those with a camera will want a sturdy tripod, freshly charged batteries, an intervalometer, and a focus set to infinity, with wide-angle, bright lenses. It's best to use shutter speeds between five and fifteen seconds, and an ISO around 3200 (or whatever your sensor can handle).

For those who adjust their calendar to the lunar cycle and advance stargazing by a few days, they will find that the Delta Aquariids-Alpha Capricornids duo offers more opportunities than the Moon seems to snatch away by eclipsing the Perseids.