Winner of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year | Full Story >
The Best Meteor Shower We Never Saw:
The minor Tau Herculid meteor shower of 2022 was projected to be a possibly exciting meteor storm. So my husband, Drew, and I headed to the local mountains, guided by PhotoPills to find a spot where the Milky Way would be rising during the brief 40 minute window of the projected maximum. We set up the camera next to a cow pasture, all alone, pitch black, no moon in the middle of no-where on the holiday evening of Memorial Day – what could possibly go wrong? The time for the peak came. We saw our first 2 meteors. Tension mounted as the camera clicked away. And then a huge water truck pulled into the parking pull out, huge lights creating daylight out of night. The driver said he had to fill the cistern and it would only take 15 minutes. We stayed, figuring that by the time we moved, found another location, and set up again the peak would be gone. In the meantime the camera clicked on. 35 minutes later he drove off. We didn’t see anymore meteors that night and decided fate had cheated us. However, to our delight when we got home and processed the images, we had captured over 80 meteors.
Canon 6D, Rokinon 14 mm F2.8. Sky images: 15 seconds, ISO 3200, f2.8. Foreground 2.5 minutes ISO 1600
