Sword of Mars: A bright Perseid meteor streaks to the left of planet Mars. You can see constellation Sagittarius just above the glow along the treeline.
This year’s Perseids meteor shower peak bridged two nights and sky conditions promised to be better Sunday than Saturday’s cloudy mess. So, off I went again to wait for meteors. On the recommendation of fellow skywatchers, I headed to a nearby Ohio state park which has a spot with the reputation of distant horizons and darker skies than we’re used to; that turned out to be true.
It was a long night at Findley State Park. The Perseids didn’t seem particularly active and really didn’t become noticeable until after 11:00 but there were a few showy fireballs to be enjoyed. I managed to capture a couple of bright meteors over the several hours I spent standing on the dam, looking up — my neck is still sore — and having all of my equipment getting covered in heavy dew. I finally left at 1:30 AM when all of my lenses had become fogged up and showed no sign of clearing.
Here is an extremely bright, and very slow fireball just within the right edge of the frame. I remember the streak appearing warm in color, yellowish, but the camera recorded the spectral colors you see here. The lights near the bottom of the picture are artificial lights onshore, not reflections of stars.
Finally, I packed up my dripping-wet gear and headed to the parking lot at about 1:30 AM but made the mistake of looking up before getting into my car. There was an amazing patch of stars surrounded by the black outlines of trees — the path of the Milky Way directly overhead. I grabbed a few shots with a lens that had somehow managed to defog, and reluctantly left for home. The experience, overall, was worth being tired and sore today.
Looking up from the parking lot: “My god, it’s full of stars” is a phrase associated with a scene from the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” spoken by David Bowman as he entered an alien-created “stargate.”
