August 21, 2010
The cosmos is full of spectacular things: ringed planets, exploding suns, rivers of stars across the night.
Perseid Storm
Birthday · August 21, 2010
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APOD published August 21, 2010. Credit: Robert Arn. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Storms on the distant horizon and comet dust raining through the heavens above are combined in this alluring nightscape. The scene was recorded in the early hours of August 13 from the Keota Star Party site on the Pawnee National Grasslands of northeastern Colorado, USA. Looking east across the prairie, the composite of 8 consecutive exposures each 30 seconds long captures the flash of lightning and a bright Perseid meteor. On the right, even the clouds can't block the light from brilliant planet Jupiter, whose mythological namesake knew how to handle both lightning bolts and meteors. Of course, this meteor's streak points back toward the shower's radiant in the heroic constellation Perseus, sharing a starry background that includes the Pleiades star cluster poised above the storm clouds. Just above the bright meteor lies the faint Andromeda Galaxy.
Image credit: Robert Arn