Between the night of August 11th and the small hours of August 13th, I set out my cameras to capture three different short timelapse sequences of the busy night sky in hopes of catching a spectacular meteor. The cameras captured a lot, but the best I saw happened outside the frame. Of course. It’s all good.
Currently speeding out of the sun after his last visit to the inner reaches of the Solar System in 1992, Comet Swift-Tuttle leaves a trail of pun. Comets are made of frozen gases, dust and rock; while the energy of the sun warms and sublimates the frozen gases, some of its solid substances are blown into space, leaving a trail of particles.
Every 133 years, Swift-Tuttle enters from outside Pluto to swing through Earth’s nearer on its way around the sun, and to pick up another dust mite and small particles before stepping out again. Earth passes through the comet dust cloud every year in early mid-August. As we go through the trail of dust and small chunks, we collect them in our atmosphere like bugs on a windstorm. The particles, like meteoroids, enter the atmosphere at incredibly high speeds (more than 100,000 miles per hour), and burn quickly due to friction with the air. The meteors we see in the air are burning their paths through the air.
Imagine Earth walking through its orbit in space around the sun, a large blue, white, and brown marble that runs majestically, silently, along a path that has been known for billions of years. Ride on this great world, you look ahead, and you see on your way a cloudy stream rising that goes on opposite sides to eternity and disappears. Earth will pass through its thickness. It’s the dustbin of Swift-Tuttle.
At the outer edge of the stream, strophic bits begin to affect the atmosphere, burning in flashes and streaks as their energy turns to heat and flame. Earth slides to, in the closest part of the comet particle path. Flashes and streaks increase. The stream of particles kills the earth’s protective skin from gases like water from a hose. In stripes and stripes, the meteoroids stick in the earth’s crust of air, punishing white hot needles to reach the ground.
Standing on the ground, small and human, the meteors shoot across the sky above the sky. Adding comet dust to the Earth’s mass radiates the shooting stars in all directions from the point where the current of comet motets affects the atmospheric shield above. For the Perseid meteors, this is a point in the northeast, not high above the horizon, in the constellation Perseus.
The accompanying timelapse sequence shows a lot of activity in the air, but by far most of it is man-made, whether satellites or airplanes. Here on the northern California coast, we see many more satellites flying in the air. Meteors are hard to spot in the timelapse because they only appear as short flashes, short streaks that do not cross the frame. Airplanes and satellites travel across the entire field of view. Satellites tend to have a uniform brightness – although this can vary as they rotate and their varied surfaces capture the sun’s glare, and will become dimmer or brighter as they pass in or out of the earthquake – while planes appear as dotted lines because of their flashing light.
Self-portrait with Perseid Meteors. Eureka lights are shining on the Pacific coast under a pair of Perseid meteors in this compilation of two images from a timelapse sequence taken during the 2020 Perseid meteor shower from the hills of Humboldt County, California. August 12, 2020.
Still from a timelapse sequence of the Perseid meteors from Fickly Hill Road, Humboldt County, California. 11 August 2020.
Self-portrait in red, with Perseid meteors on my mind … In the hills of Humboldt County, California, just before midnight August 13, 2020.
To read previous entries of “Night Light of the North Coast”, click on my name above the article. Try following me on my website about my most current photography or buying a print mindscapefx.com , or follow me on Instagram at @david_wilson_mfx and on Twitter @davidwilson_mfx.
