The annual Perseid meteor shower, the Comet dust, rained down on planet Earth earlier this month. While enjoying the anticipated space weather above Zhangbei Prairie, Hebei Province, China, astronomer Xiang Zhan recorded a spectacular series of 10 second long exposures spanning four hours on the night of August 12/13 using a wide angle lens. Image © Xiang Zhan (Beijing Planetarium)
Combining frames which captured 68 meteor flashes, he produced the above composite view of the Perseids of summer. Although the sand-sized comet particles are traveling parallel to each other, the resulting shower meteors clearly seem to radiate from a single point on the sky in the eponymous constellation Perseus.
The radiant effect is due to perspective, as the parallel tracks appear to converge at a distance. The next notable meteor shower may be the Orionids in late October.
source APOD
The Perseid radiant turns out to be complex. The main radiant is situated near the star Eta Persei, but other radiants appear to be active at the same time. As long ago as 1879, W. F. Denning (England) pointed out that he had “detected the existence of two other simultaneous showers from Chi and Gamma Persei.” This latter shower is one of the most active of the secondary radiants and seems to have been frequently observed during the twentieth century—especially with telescopic aid. One of the most recent examples of the complexity of the Perseid meteor shower was revealed in three studies of the radiant conducted during 1969 to 1971, by observers in the Crimea. In addition to the main radiant near Eta Persei, they confirmed the existence of the major radiants near Chi and Gamma Persei, as well as minor radiants near Alpha and Beta Persei. These meteor showers are generally short-lived and exhibit radiants that move nearly parallel to the main radiant.