Perseid Meteor Shower

This week saw the Earth swing through the debris trail left by comet Swift-Tuttle, producing the annual Perseid meteor shower.  Prognosticators and Astronomers alike were suggesting that due to perturbations of the comet by Jupiter, we would be plowing through a particularly denser area of the debris stream and that we would experience an active shower compared to many years.  Predictions were for upwards of 200 meteors an hour, and I believe these were accurate.

I packed up my camera and friend Travis, and we headed up the Mount Lemmon Highway to the Geology Vista pullout at about 9 PM on Thursday evening...we were joined by the entire meteor shower watching community of Tucson, who apparently had the same idea...the pullouts on the highway were all full by 10 PM!  I set up may Canon 6D with a 14 mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 and took 60 second exposures for several hours.  I obtained about 10 exposures with meteors and below is a crop of one of them, with the brightest Perseid I captured.   (Be sure to note the Andromeda Galaxy, below the left edge of the Perseid).

Despite being at nearly 7000 ft in elevation and looking to the northeast (away from the glow of Tucson), you can see a lot of scattered light in the lower portion of image...the bulk of this is from the constant parade of traffic on the highway as well as cars that would pull into Geology Vista, leaving their headlights on, despite the lot being full and filled with obvious meteor watchers.

Finally, a quick bit of clarification on terminology...in space, these objects are called 'meteoroids' (like asteroids)...what differentiates them from asteroids is simply their small size.  They are called 'meteors' only while plowing through our atmosphere and burning up.  So a meteor is actually the bright streak we see, or what is commonly referred to as a shooting star.  Should a piece of one of these actually survive the trip through the atmosphere and land on the ground, we then have a 'meteorite.'  So, in space - meteoroid; burning up in atmosphere - meteor; safely on the ground - meteorite!

Finally, lots of excuses for not blogging much anymore, but the most honest one is lack of time...life continues to be busy and fulfilling and when I have down time, I seem to spend it relaxing and not at the computer.