by yaksa77
After the dress rehearsal for this morning’s Perseid meteor shower peak provided so many sightings on Friday I had hight hopes. Never one to conform to expectations though, the run up to the peak was decidely slow starting and a bit lacklustre!
Undeterred by this, or the stubborn refusal of evening cloud to move on, I still set out just gone midnight to the Wye Downs in mid-Kent. Despite only capturing a few flashes with the camera eventually the show sparked into life, and in just over an hour I saw 33 meteors!
This is probably the best of the photos I got while out in the countryside, I love the way the meteor flashed into view right in the middle of a gap in the clouds.
The Pleiades cluster is also nice and bright, and you can see Jupiter is just rising at the base of the fence post directly below the meteor!
After a few hours I packed up and headed home to find the skies had cleared over my house. Not wanting to miss the opportunity I set up again and caught a few more (the best of which are above and below). In the image above the Perseid can be seen streaking away from an oval smudge that is the Andromeda galaxy.
I’m so pleased that after my disappointment with the faint efforts I got last year, over the last two nights I’ve caught some nice clear examples of one of nature’s most beautiful free displays!
I’m not sure what the weather forecast is for this evening but the shower should still be fairly strong, and I feel on a bit of a roll at the moment so may just set the camera up again tonight.
Well, I wouldn’t want to miss anything would I!?
Filed under: Astronomy, Blog gallery, Meteor, Night sky, Space, yaska77 Tagged: 550D, astrophotography, Canon, Canon EOS, kent, meteor, Meteor Shower, Perseid, photography, postaweek, Rebel T2i, shooting star, wallpaper, Wye Downs