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