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Subscribe to RSSMeteor showers are marvelous sights, as myriads of stargazers found out a week ago. But seeing them can sometimes be inconvenient. To get the best view, you have to go far from city lights and stay up until the wee hours of the morning. The ideal situation would be to camp out in a beautiful location like California's Joshua Tree National Park and keep your eyes open all night.
That's exactly what photographer Henry Jun Wah Lee did last week. He set up his camera in the park for two nights around the peak of the Perseid meteor shower (Aug. 12 and 15), took a series of exposures, and spliced them together artfully into a multi-day time-lapse sequence.
The result makes it seem as if the meteors are popping like fireworks amid the multitudes of stars in the Milky Way ... two nights' worth in just a little more than minute. But not all of the flashes you see are shooting stars.
"I did catch some airplanes," Lee told me today. The streaks that appear to move across the sky are more likely nighttime airplane transits rather than meteors. But there's a killer meteor flash that pops up around the 30-second mark, leaving a little wisp of vapor in its wake.
"When that happened, it lit up the whole sky like a flash of lightning," Lee said.
For still more August awesomeness, check out the Perseid meteor gallery at SpaceWeather.com.
The Perseid show is pretty much over, as this activity graph from the International Meteor Organization illustrates. But there's more to come: The highlights ahead include the Leonids of Nov. 17 and the Geminids of Dec. 13-14. That timetable should give you enough advance warning to scope out a picturesque viewpoint ... at Joshua Tree or closer to home.
The video above is by Henry Jun Wah Lee via Vimeo. Tip o' the Log to Bad Astronomy.
Leave a Comment:
Can we actually see the Milky Way in plain sight?
Yes, it's possible to see the Milky Way if you get away from city lights and have clear skies. It's sad that so many people today (living in urban areas) have never seen the Milky Way!
Yes, its very sad indeed. I live in an urban area and one can barely see a couple of stars in the night. By the way, thanks for all those good articles. They're part of my daily dose of Science, XD.
I live in a rural area, and enjoy picking the Milky Way out on a clear night. The farther you can get from the cities light polution the better. The persieds were also spectacular for the 20 minutes I was able to stay awake, unfortunatly had to work. It's also worthwhile to note that the center of the Milky Way can only be seen from the southern hemisphere. I have always wanted to view the sky in the southern hemisphere, maybe someday I will be so lucky. Cheers on a good video!
I live in a big city, but luckily have a dark countryside to drive to when I want to see "forever". It is well worth the effort.
In Nov. of this year, I'll be in South Australia..........I hope to get some photos of the milky way.
Actually you can see it from the northern hemisphere: to find the center of the Galaxy look to Sagittarius low in the southern horizon and you will find what appears to resemble a teapot with steam of the Milky Way coming from its spout. Hold your pinky at arm length from the tip of the spout; there lies the Galaxy’s center with its super massive black hole, yikes!
I thought we were part of the Milky Way. Am I wrong?
We are, but are far enough out on one of the spiral arms to be able to see the center.
I didn't stay out to view the meteor shower, but every time I would let the dogs out, or just take a quick break outside since the house was still hot from the early day, I would just look up at the stars in my back yard.
Just as I was coming back in one time, above my house in the distance (Up and to the South a bit) a bright light ignited and streamed downwards a nice distance and disappeared. It left behind it from where it ignited to where it went out, a blue trail was left glowing that took about 15 to 20 seconds to fade out. It was awesome.
Mainly because I've never seen a meteor before and was searching the sky looking for things more closer to shooting stars. Just tiny streakers. When this huge thing, that was the size of a firecracker shooter, went off in the sky, I was just dumbfounded. It was so cool!
Adam 1755069 More than likely what you saw was space debris like a piece of a falling satellite. Small stuff looks huge when it heats up entering earth's atmosphere. Consider yourself lucky to have been there at the right time. My daughter and I saw one driving home to the farm one time years ago. Like you said, it is awesome. It was a very wide path and a bright blue that left a streak as you stated and ended after a time about one sixth of the sky arch or 30 degrees. This is much wider than a meteor would leave unless it is quite large. I always follow the apparent path just in case there is an explosion as it hits the ground and a flash. More meterors fall near the earth's poles than in the middle latitudes, that is where they find a lot of the Mars meterors that land on earth. These left Mars many thousands of years ago when large meterors hit Mars and splattered pieces of Mars into outer space toward earth. All very interesting if you continue to study them. One of these looked like it had microscopic petrified bacteria, but that is as yet unproven and is unlikely to have happened.
Yes, we are near the edge of the milky way and we can look at the rest of in since it's so huge.
I just cannot understand why most people think that the stars are just "ho-hum no big deal". Some people think that I am a little flakey for reminding them of the showers.
NOW WAIT A MINUTE !!! I love the Perseids, but if this video was truly a time-lapse, at the rate the background stars are rotating, you would NOT BE ABLE TO SEE ANY OF THOSE STREAKS ! They would be moving waaaay too fast to be seen on video. The star rotations appears to be at least 20 TIMES natural speed, but the meteors are only 2-3 times natural speed. Sorry.... but I smell some video photo-shopping going on here... it's a beautiful montage, nonetheless....
The ones where you can actually see a streak moving across the sky are the airplane transits. The momentary flashes are the meteors. I'm on your side ... that's why I asked him about those moving streaks.
It is true and all too sad that so many of us are are so pluged into our lves that we don't take the time to smell the roses.......nice work on the vid.....entertaining
Awesome____— Just awesome