Tuesday 13 August 2019

Perseids 2019

I've never (intentionally) captured a meteor storm on camera before. Maybe the odd single streak by accident as part of a star trail sequence.
The weather in the UK never seems to cooperate with astronomical events, but for the peak of the Perseids storm overnight on 12/13 August, it looked like the sky would be clear once the moon had set at around 0230.
I had a window of an hour or so before astronomical twighlight started and luckily the cloud broke and I had a clear(ish), warm(ish) night to enjoy the show.

I wanted some interesting foreground, so decided on the Victoria Monument on Chobham Common.
Luckily there were no "dog walkers" or other undesirables in the car park at 2am, so I setup and waited.
I saw around 20 meteors in the hour I was watching and managed to capture 5 on the camera, which I have consolidated into a single image. A bit of Lightroom work was also required to get rid of the light pollution from London, Heathrow and the M25/M3, which are all very close.
Technically, this isn't a great image, but I'm very proud of the content and even got the image published on the cnet website!

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/see-the-perseid-meteor-shower-make-a-celestial-scene-worldwide/4/

Multiple (5) image composite of Perseids meteors over a 1 hour period. 10mm Sigma lens, 20sec @f4.0 ISO1600

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