Perseids Meteor Shower at Flaming Gorge

[JimFox]

This was from a few weeks ago during the peak of the Perseids Meteor Shower. I went to Flaming Gorge with Alisa. It was our first time there, so some scouting was in order to find a good spot. Mike Lewis had been there this summer, and gave me a few tips, but he had been on the southern end of it, and we ended up running out of daylight before we could get that far. It's a place I know I want to explore more at another time. So for this night, we settled on one of the peninsula's that let us set up a camera to the NE and then one to the SE. That worked out really well.

One thing I noticed that was strange this year, was that the Perseids Meteor shower was supposed to emanate from the NE which is where the tail of the Milky Way from. While some meteors seemed to come from the NE, the majority of them actually came from the SE this year. So that's strange because Perseids is not located there.

This is looking to the NE at the Tail of the Milky Way.

For this, I took 1 master frame, and then blended in a bunch of the meteors from the night. This isn't all of them. I noticed that a lot of the meteors this year were really short ones, so this a compilation of the longer ones.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[Bob]

Jim,
This is very interesting image. I like the processing you did on the foreground and the milky way. The problem I have with all meteor shower images not just this one is that with all the meteors the image doesn't have a center it make the image too busy and I have a difficult time keeping my eyes on one spot. How about just one or two meteors? Also, the reflection in the lake looks interesting was it possible to move the camera to the right to capture more of the lake.
Bob

 

[AlanLichty]

Lots of chaos in the skies with this one. Kind of amazing how many different trajectories are in play with this event.

 

[JimFox]

Thanks so much Bob!

Yeah, I get you about the chaos of the meteors. I can leave some out so that it does feel more like it's radiating out from one center.

What you are suggesting about wanting more water is exactly what I was scouting for. Two things surprised me most about Flaming Gorge. The first was the lack of a Gorge. There is a Gorge there, I could spot it in the distance, but it appears to occupy a very small portion of Flaming Gorge, as opposed to like Black Canyon where the Canyon is obvious and runs through the whole park.

The 2nd thing that surprised me was the amount of people there in what is a pretty remote area. I had scouted on some maps prior, and had found all of these peninsulas along the west side of the gorge, where I could go set up along the waters edge or just above it. Well when we got there, we found every square inch basically filled with RV's, campers, and boats. And it sounded like everyone was having group parties. There was lots of lights and noise until well after midnight.

So the spot we ended up choosing was on a hill right before the road descended down to the water with the RV chaos. Where we stopped gave us views to both the North and the South. The view towards Perseids, to the NE is this one. I wished it had more water, trust me I looked for a better vantage point, but with so many people all along the waters edge it just wasn't in the cards. On a good note though, the view to the South is it's the core of the Milky Way did have a much better view of the water. I haven't processed any of those yet.

 

[JimFox]

Lots of chaos in the skies with this one. Kind of amazing how many different trajectories are in play with this event.

Thanks Alan, it is pretty crazy for sure!

 

[Beth]

looks like aliens are coming to get you. nice details in the sky, love seeing all of the stars.