Perseids

The Perseids are a recurrent meteor shower created by the earth passing through the debris trail of the comet Swift–Tuttle. The Perseids are so called because the radiant, the point from which they appear to come, lies in the constellation Perseus.

The shower is visible from mid-July to late-August each year, with the peak in activity between August 9 and 14, depending on the particular location of the stream. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. Every several years, there is a "burst" event and the rate doubles or triples. 2016 is a "burst" year. They can be seen all across the sky; however, because of the shower’s radiant in the constellation of Perseus, the Perseids are primarily visible in the Northern Hemisphere. As with many meteor showers the visible rate is greatest in the pre-dawn hours, since more meteors are scooped up by the side of the Earth moving forward into the stream, corresponding to local times between midnight and noon. Some can also be seen before midnight, often grazing the Earth’s atmosphere to produce long bright trails and sometimes fireballs. Most Perseids burn up in the atmosphere while at heights above 50 miles.

This year the peak was the night between August 11 and August 12. Lauri and I decided to go out west of Fairfield to watch and try to get some images of the Milky Way and the Perseids. Most of our images were just like this one - not a bad shot of the Milky Way, but no Perseids.  Not that they were not around - there were lots of them, but not in the field of view of the camera or they were faint enough not to show up on the sensor.

Still, we did manage to capture a handful of images with Perseids in them. The first image, is so faint that it is easy to miss it, but the remainder are pretty good.

Fairfield, Utah County, Utah, USA, August 12, 2016. Nikon D5000, AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, Manual Exposure mode, f/3.5 for 30 seconds, ISO 3200, processed in Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC.