More Meteors!

I headed up to Lily Lake in RMNP for the meteor shower. It was cloudy off and on but fortunately there were enough clear skies to capture meteors.

I did one big stitched image to capture the sky and foreground. And I used a 14mm lens to capture all the meteors. Then I took each of the frames with meteors and up-rezed and aligned them with the larger stitched image. Then, masked out everything but the meteors in those images. In all there's about 26 meteors in this shot. I'd like to say the orange glow is ambient light left over from the sunset. But it's most likely light pollution from Estes Park bouncing off a thin layer of clouds. But I still like the effect. I think that's what also provided just enough light to give some detail to the foreground. I tried to eliminate the orange color cast there.

That is a wicked, wicked cool shot, Grant! A "the sky is falling" kind of shot. The color from the light pollution doesn't bother me at all, and you could easily change the color if you wanted to. This makes me realize how fortunate we are that most of these things burn up before hitting the earth! And, is that the Pleiades showing so brightly in the upper left middle? The Milky Way is just the icing on this star cake.

Looks like the End of the World!

Oh, wait thats the 21st.

Damn, thats a wild shot of the meteorites. I dont mind the "light polution" - I see you got the Milky Way in there.

Spectacular, love the otherworldly orange glow.

Yep, that's a winner. The glow definitely makes this image even more special.

Oh Boy, how does one critique a shot that I’m not even close to patient enough to even try!

I’ll go out on a limb. Noise Pollution doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, adds some nice color to the scene. Shooting east from RMNP will get you this phenomenon every time. Even from the west side of the Divide you will get that orange glow with night shots. I also admire your Lily Lake choice. Seems very random and I’m digging the fact you did your homework with this composition.

Think my issues come down to processing and focal length. I do think your foreground WB looks pretty spot on and the mountains are very sharp against the sky. That’s not easy to do. However, I’m not really feeling the need for 14 mm. 14 mm gives even more dotted/redundant sky, and almost flattens out your Lilly Lake mountains, plus it makes the lake seem distorted. I’m feeling the sky only in this image and forgetting that you worked so hard to get to RMNP and shoot all night in the cold. I’m curious what a shorter exposed sky with less dots/stars with masked in bright meteors would look like.

All in all, I think your on to something here and by all means, you worked your butt off making this awesome moment happen. Thanks for sharing!

simply awesome..

Excellent work Grant and a very interesting technique. I would love to see a larger version of this.

Thanks for the comments! Morris, I think that is actually the Andromeda Galaxy that you see.

Thanks for the suggestions Kane. I used 14mm because I wanted to capture as many of the big meteors as possible. Since this was such a big stitched image, I could have easily cropped in. But I liked the pattern that the meteors made and chose to only crop a little bit on the right and left. I photographed another scene that included Longs Peak with a second camera at about 17mm. I'll consider cropping in there to 20-24mm, but suspect I won't like the image as much as this one since the mountains were farther away and I captured fewer meteors.

Grant, like everyone else, I have no issues with the orange horizon color cast. Very impressive comp, and I do agree with the 14mm choice despite Kane's reasoning.

As for the orange glow, if you want, try this: 1) Select the sky for adjustments. 2) Apply in PS Cooling Filter 80 @ 100%. 3) Apply Warming Filter 85 @ 40%. 4) Apply Levels @ .75. This will darken the upper portion of the sky to near black and reduce the orange glow considerably.

Such an awesome image, Grant!

This image has the "Wow" factor. One of my favorites in a long time.

Doug Beezley
Snellville, GA

hmmm...as you know i always speak my mind, so i've gotta say, it aint workin for me. It looks like a bunch of light sabres in a sky full of snow--definitely bizarre but not in a good sorta way for me. You can't please em all, Grant...
As a technical question (which despite being a meteorologist i must confess i don't know off the top of my head...) why do the meteors cross here when in every other multi-meteor shot ive seen the paths are parallel? David??

Hey Stan, I knew this shot wouldn't be to everyone's tastes, since it's bordering on photo art. I had similar feelings when I first saw a shot like this. But I realized it's probably the only way to convey the essence of a meteor shower in a single 2-dimensional photo.

The reason the paths aren't aligned is because the radiant where all the meteors appear to originate from moves across the sky over the course of the night. Since these shots were taken over many hours, they all originated from different points in the sky relative to the ground. The meteors pointing more to the left were taken earlier in the night when Gemini was high and towards the left and the meteors pointing more to the right were taken later in the night when Gemini was lower and to the right.

The ones you see that are aligned were manually rotated to align them back to one point in the sky. It's really just a matter of personal preference whether you want to keep them as they were relative to the ground or realign them back to the radiant in the sky.

ok, thanks for the explanation, Grant--i pretty much figured that out after i posted i was just puzzled why many were aligned but some not--your response clears things up.

Interesting take on the Geminids, very dramatic and reminds me of some paintings which is cool. I'll have to try enlarging my meteors next time to see if I like it.

The barely lit foreground and the glow in the sky complement the meteor shower perfectly. I happen to like this a lot!
You are the Sky King, Grant.

Thanks for the additional comments! Jason, the meteors actually weren't enlarged relative to the mountains. The stitched image was just so much bigger than the individual images with the meteors that I had to up-rez those shots so I could align them with the stitched image. Had I taken a single image for the background and then added all the meteors with no up-rez, the image would have looked virtually the same. I just did the stitched image so the photo can be printed at bigger sizes.