Sir Patrick Moore Prize winner: Encounter Across Light Years by Yurui Gong and Xizhen Ruan

This photograph captures a lucky moment when a brilliant fireball from the Perseid meteor shower appears to graze the Andromeda galaxy.

#astrophotography
#Perseids
#Andromeda

Perseid shower
we admire them from the trail
where they can't be seen

🌃 Commentary, wip photos, and ink palette used: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/6671348
💧 Haiku Ink series: https://humangray.com/haiku-ink-series

#FountainPenInk #ink #haiku #MastoArt #CreativeToots #poetry #perseids #stars

2025 August 6

Meteor before Galaxy
* Image Credit & Copyright: Fritz Helmut Hemmerich
https://www.flickr.com/people/fhhemmerich/

Explanation:
What's that green streak in front of the Andromeda galaxy? A meteor. While photographing the Andromeda galaxy in 2016, near the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower, a small pebble from deep space crossed right in front of our Milky Way Galaxy's far-distant companion. The small meteor took only a fraction of a second to pass through this 10-degree field. The meteor flared several times while braking violently upon entering Earth's atmosphere. The green color was created, at least in part, by the meteor's gas glowing as it vaporized. Although the exposure was timed to catch a Perseid meteor, the orientation of the imaged streak seems a better match to a meteor from the Southern Delta Aquariids, a meteor shower that peaked a few weeks earlier. Not coincidentally, the Perseid Meteor Shower peaks next week, although this year the meteors will have to outshine a sky brightened by a nearly full moon.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250806.html

#space #perseids #astrophotography #photography #science #astronomy #nature #NASA

2025 August 25

The Meteor and the Star Cluster
* Image Credit & Copyright: Yousif Alqasimi & Essa Al Jasmi
https://www.instagram.com/alqasmyi/
https://www.instagram.com/eaqj/

Explanation:
Sometimes even the sky surprises you. To see more stars and faint nebulosity in the Pleiades star cluster (M45), long exposures are made. Many times, less interesting items appear on the exposures that were not intended -- but later edited out. These include stuck pixels, cosmic ray hits, frames with bright clouds or Earth's Moon, airplane trails, lens flares, faint satellite trails, and even insect trails. Sometimes, though, something really interesting is caught by chance. That was just the case a few weeks ago in al-Ula, Saudi Arabia when a bright meteor streaked across during an hour-long exposure of the Pleiades. Along with the famous bright blue stars, less famous and less bright blue stars, and blue-reflecting dust surrounding the star cluster, the fast rock fragment created a distinctive green glow, likely due to vaporized metals.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-messier-catalog/messier-45/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250825.html

#space #perseids #astrophotography #photography #science #astronomy #nature #NASA