The 2015 Perseid Meteor Shower is Underway

Perseid Meteor and Milky Way Over the Sierra Nevada, by Jeff Sullivan on 500px

Comet Swift-Tuttle only passes the earth and circles the sun once every 133 years, but the earth passes through its trail of dust every year.  The debris field is large, so Perseid meteors may be seen on nights from July 17 through August 24.  The earth passes through the most dense portion of the comet's dust trail on the night of August 12-13, so that is when the peak, or maximum hourly rate of meteors, will be seen.  The rates will also be high throughout the August 11 - 14 period, so you can look for Perseid meteors any or all nights this week.

Below is a video that I assembled in 2009 from several nights photographing the Perseid meteor shower.  It is a time-lapse video that condenses several hours of meteor activity into seconds of video:


Not everything that moves in the video are meteors; the meteors are the brief streaks of light, the slower ones are airplanes.  As you see the Milky Way and stars move, that is from the rotation of the earth.

You can also see haze that is smoke from forest fires that year.  I may have similar challenges this year due to the fires currently raging during California's drought.  Already the photo I captured above from last Saturday night is darker than usual, due to smoke from a wildfire.

Perseid Meteor 2014

Perseid meteor 4:19 am August 11, 2014

Yes, it is possible to get Perseid meteors in spite of the full moon.  This one was at 4:19 am, right next to the North Star, Polaris.  For a little over 1.5 hour I had my camera shooting 15 second exposures at f/5.6, ISO 2000.  At roughly four shots per minute, I ended up with nearly 400 images.  This was by far the brightest Perseid fireball I caught.  I don't know if our clouds will break enough for me to shoot again tonight, but if they do, I may focus on a ground-based subject and see whether I can happen to pick up some meteors as well. 

To see some of my Perseid meteor shower time-lapse videos from past years, visit my YouTube account to see them in my Night Time-lapse playlist:

   #2014

The Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight!

The good news is that the Geminid meteor shower peaks on the nights of December 13 and 14, so tonight one of the strongest meteor showers of the year. The bad news is that the moon rising around 8 pm tonight and 9 pm tomorrow night will interfere with the visibility of the meteors. How much will it interfere? Actually I have a video of Geminid meteor shower from past year with and without the moon in the sky which can show you the difference. Make sure you're watching this in HD, and it's best watched full scree as well: You'd definitely see more meteors without the moon, so try watching before the moon rises, but if you're up in the key viewing hours between 11am and dawn, look up in the eastward sky and you might get lucky and see a decent fireball!

Meteor and Milky Way over the Sierra Nevada

Meteor and Milky Way over the Sierra Nevada, originally uploaded by Jeff Sullivan (pls see msg in profile!).

A single image from a several hour, 438 frame timelapse I'm working on, taken while backpacking last Summer.

Flickr isn't accepting the HD video files I've been trying to upload this week. Vimeo.com only lets me upload one high definition file per week (I don't have a revenue stream for video to justify upgrading to unlimited), so I'm not sure when I'll a high resolution copy available. In the meantime however, you can see Vimeo's severely downgraded preview:

Sierra Nevada Milky Way Timelapse from Jeff Sullivan on Vimeo.

If this embedded player doesn't seem to play it well, try viewing it directly over on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/18260497. For low resolution previews that Vimeo downconverts from HD, I don't recommend full screen viewing.

It looks a lot better on my laptop of course, where it actually runs slower and you can see more details such as the meteor, a satellite, and so on, so I may slow down the frame rate on the next version of this that I create.

If you like my coverage of places and events, send me around the world to capture more images and timelapse videos for you to enjoy! Blog Your Way Around The World -
http://www.blogyourwayaroundtheworld.com/blogs/view/1238 The voting deadline is December 31.