Cosmic rain over isle of Lindisfarne

It’s almost meteor season again, and we wanted to show you this beautiful composite image of Perseid meteors seen over Lindisfarne – a tidal island off the northeast coast of England – a year ago. Peter Greig, who took the photos and created this image, wrote:

… I drove two hours to Lindisfarne to go on a Perseid meteor hunting expedition. When I arrived just after sunset it was pretty cloudy but the weather man told me it was going to clear up later in the night. Sure enough it did, and it wasn’t long before meteors started catching my eye. Once the fading sun light finally disappeared and I setup my camera the meteor shower really started putting on a good show. I stayed there until 3 a.m. but fortunately I wasn’t alone. There were 3 other like minded photographers who were great company and helped pass the time away.

Once daylight started slowly creeping in I decided it was time to pack up and head for home.

This is the exact image that I imagined and planned to come home with from that trip. It is a composite of stacked images (or pieces of images). I chose the clearest background image to use for the starry sky then chose the best light painted foreground and layered it over my background. I then went through all of my images and gathered all the shots that contained a meteor, cut them out and layered them on top of my background image to demonstrate the radiant point to which the Perseid Meteors originate.

Hope you like it as much as I do. I’m pretty chuffed with this one!

We do like it, Peter. It’s awesome! Thanks for posting to EarthSky’s Facebook page!

Learn about 2014 summer meteors with EarthSky’s meteor shower guide