The Perseid meteor shower

One small meteor in a cloudy sky
as photographed from my backyard 

Last night, I spent two hours in the early hours of the morning looking for shooting stars. 

I managed to spot about ten and photograph just one.

It was a very poor night for astro-photography, with lots of wispy high level cloud.  I also had to contend with high humidity and the lens on my Canon DSLR kept fogging up.

Anyway, I did manage to get this grainy image in which you can see a Perseid meteor top centre right.

The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids are so-called because the point from which they appear to come, called the radiant, lies in the constellation Perseus. The name derives in part from the word Perseides (Περσείδες), a term found in Greek mythology referring to the sons of Perseus.

The stream of debris is called the Perseid cloud and stretches along the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it travels on its 130-year orbit. Most of the dust in the cloud today is around a thousand years old. However, there is also a relatively young filament of dust in the stream that was pulled off the comet in 1862. (Wikipedia)



Enlargement of my photo showing a Perseid
meteor flashing past the constellation of Cassiopeia