Perseides
The 2016 Perseid meteor shower
performed well on the night
of August 11/12.
The sky on that memorable evening was recorded from a perch overlooking
Yosemite
Valley,
planet Earth, in this scene composed of
25 separate images selected from an all-night set of sequential exposures.
Each image contains a single meteor and was placed in alignment using
the background stars.
The digital manipulation accounts for the Earth's rotation throughout
the night and allows the explosion of
colorful trails to be
viewed in perspective toward the
shower's
radiant in the constellation Perseus.
The fading alpenglow gently lights the west face of
El Capitan just after sunset.
Just before sunrise, a faint band zodiacal light, or the false dawn,
shines upward from the east, left of
Half Dome at the valley's far horizon.
Car lights illuminate the valley road.
Of course, the image is filled with other celestial sights from that
Perseid night, including the Milky Way and the Pleiades star cluster.