Meteor
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Midsummer Night’s Wishes
Meteor photography is part planning, part luck, and lots of time spent under the stars – check for moon phase and clear sky, find a safe, dark location (which hopefully is not mosquito-infested), and shoot lots and lots of exposures. For the annual Perseid Meteor Shower I typically capture a few thousand exposures over several nights, using two cameras. Usually a few dozen exposures contain meteors, some bright and many other dim. This one is a rare gem – two bright, colourful meteors, streaking through the sky close to the Milky Way, both striking during the same 15-second exposure time, and both within view of the camera.
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Perseid Meteor Shower and Airglow
The Perseid Meteor Shower is formed when Earth travels through the debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. The meteor shower can be seen annually from mid July to late August, and peaks around August 11 to 13 where 100 or more meteors can be seen per hour under ideal conditions. Dark skies are needed for the best view, as in Manitoulin Island, Ontario where this image was taken. This image captures the Perseids within a span of 3.5 hours. All Perseids appear to originate from a point, the radiant, in the Perseus constellation off to the right of the image. The airglow, formed as air molecules in the upper atmosphere were excited by solar radiation, was very faint to the eyes, but showed up as a green and red glow throughout the sky under long exposure.
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Geminid Meteor Shower
Geminid meteor shower peaks every year around December 13 or 14. While the winter nights are chilly, those who brave the cold will be rewarded with a spectacular show. The Geminids are often bright, and surely plentiful. Under ideal conditions, one can expect to see upward of 120 meteors an hour. The radiant of the Geminids, the point where all the meteors appear to come from, is the constellation of Gemini (the Twins).
To create this composite image, the camera was placed on a star tracker and set to capture 4-second exposures continuously from 4 am to 6:30 am. The 11 meteors were in their correct positions relative to the stars, which were in turn in the correct positions relative to the landscape at 6:30 am.
