Thursday, September 29, 2011

2010 Perseid Meteor Shower

Well, after a much-too long absence from blogging, it's time for me to catch up a bit. I'll be posting a number of articles over the next few little while to get caught up with the present.

The first post is regarding the Perseid Meteor Shower from August 2010. The Perseid's appear to originate from the constellation Perseus and are the remnants of the Swift-Tuttle comet. The peak rate of the meteor shower has seemed to diminish over the years. When I was a kid, I remember we would count over 100 per hour. This past August, we didn't even count 30 per hour. It could have been that it was somewhat cloudy, but the shower is nothing like what it used to be. The average peak rate currently is about 60 per hour.

Below are pictures from the shower, which I photographed with my astro-buddy Bob Johnson of Blackholes and Astrostuff. The first three images were taken with a Canon 40D and Tokina 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 fisheye lens. The last one was taken with a Nikon D90 and 50mm f/1.8 lens.