Space and Time

August 15, 2024 7:37 AM

A photographer captures the Perseid metor shower over Stonehenge. Every time you think that the universe has nothing left to show you, it rains wonder.
posted by SPrintF (22 comments total)

Wow, that is an amazing and lovely image. Thank you so much for posting it, SPrintF!
posted by Bella Donna at 7:55 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]

It was cloudy here during the Perseids, so thank you for showing me what I missed!
posted by Lynsey at 8:06 AM on August 15

.....really looks like incoming galactic missiles, launched 5000 years ago - just arriving now, angry at the presumption of the builders to organize a monument thusly.
posted by lalochezia at 8:13 AM on August 15

Oh my goodness. I thought I was prepared for that but then I clicked through and it took my breath away.

And I love your beautiful words.

(I also encourage everyone to look at this marvelous animation from a few days ago at APOD, courtesy of folks at NASA, CAMS, and SETI - be sure to click and drag for maximum coolness.)

This is a wondrous and beautiful thing. Thank you so much, SPrintF!
posted by kristi at 8:16 AM on August 15 [4 favorites]

I love the Perseids so much. Last year I finally moved to a place where it’s dark enough I can watch them in my own backyard, if the weather cooperates. We got exactly one properly clear night this week and it was on Monday, right at the peak. Even saw one of the proper fireball type ones, that go on for seconds and leave a visible trail. I gasp out loud every single time I see a meteor, it’s always a surprise even an hour into watching the shower.
posted by cabbage raccoon at 8:25 AM on August 15 [1 favorite]

The Perseids? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your trilithons?
posted by oulipian at 8:53 AM on August 15 [4 favorites]

It was cloudy here during the Perseids, so thank you for showing me what I missed!

If I'm deciphering the description correctly, I'm not sure that this is really what you would have seen. It's a composite of many images (nonsimultaneously taken?). Someone correct me if I'm wrong, though! I admit this kind of image troubles me, because it diverges from what you would've seen while purporting, at least implicitly, to represent it. The intentions are good, but does it get us closer to, or further from, nature's wonder?
posted by praemunire at 10:04 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]

It's admittedly a composite of multiple exposures, with each meteor streak probably its own source image and layer, stacked on an image optimized for the Milky Way. I wouldn't be surprised if the exposure for Stonehenge itself weren't also composited in from a separate frame or stack of frames. The photographer almost certainly also had to edit out a number of satellite streaks, which are the biggest reason I didn't carry my camera for our trip this year because they were in EVERY PHOTO I took last year. In post-processing the satellites are obvious because each satellite is usually present in multiple frames, but I found the work of removing them all so demoralizing I just gave up, and this year I just didn't even try.

(In retrospect this might be one instance where I'd actually be willing to give AI editing a try. Let it stack and align all the stars over a series of exposures, highlight everything that moved, and automatically erase anything that spans multiple frames).

Anyway, it's a cool composite and I'm glad the photographer's skies were clear enough. We barely saw anything this year.
posted by fedward at 10:48 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]

Real-time tears of joy. How beautiful.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:03 AM on August 15

it's a cool composite and I'm glad the photographer's skies were clear enough

It is! I don't want to be excessively negative about it or imply that it's a fraud or similar.
posted by praemunire at 11:18 AM on August 15

Thanks for posting SPrintF and reminding us to look UP ... and think about Deep Time, connecting to our ancestors.

I don't see a composite image as a problem at all; what we think we see is always a composite, forever being assembled in realtime|reeltime by our brain - and tempered by our temper. Nothing is what it seems, it is always more wondrous
posted by unearthed at 12:05 PM on August 15 [1 favorite]

I hope I get to see a sky like that someday. I genuinely do not believe it exists. I know it must and I know the reasons why it's visible in some places and camera shots and not when I look outside of my house at night... but until I see it I just won't believe it. Like all of the other continents or Canada.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:46 PM on August 15

The photographer almost certainly also had to edit out a number of satellite streaks, which are the biggest reason I didn't carry my camera for our trip this year because they were in EVERY PHOTO I took last year.

As a hobbyist photographer who has been wanting to get seriously into landscape astrophotography for years now (in a world of shit, space stuff and astrophotography is one of the few things that brings me joy), this is incredibly demoralizing and depressing, I have never had good enough dark skies access to even attempt a photo like this and didnt realize satellites had ruined it so throughly. Fucking Starlink, once again tech assholes ruin the world. What's the point of even trying anything anymore?

There goes my dream of ever seeing the Milky Way I guess.
posted by photo guy at 1:13 PM on August 15

I would like, one day, to visit the Racetrack Playa and see this.
posted by SPrintF at 2:07 PM on August 15 [3 favorites]

I remain depressed that the Milky Way, as seen in this photo, used to be visible to the naked eye pretty much any place on earth - but now, the vast majority of humans cannot see it like this outside of long-exposure photography or a long road trip to the middle of nowhere.

We need to turn off our lights. Globally. We don't look up at the stars any more because we can't see that there is something there to look at. When we stop looking at the stars, we stop being reminded how small we are and how much we need each other in this vast universe. We stop dreaming and we start squabbling. We need to be reminded that the universe exists.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:22 PM on August 15 [3 favorites]

I missed this year's Perseids in light-polluted London, but I have a good Perseid memory to share:

A couple years ago I was working in a town which had decent night-sky darkness. When that year's Perseids peaked I had just had COVID, and lost my job while I had it, and was at a low ebb.

My partner was there, and the relationship was less than 6 months old at that point. He is a morning person who tires quickly at night; I'm the total opposite.

But when I mentioned I might like to go try and see some Perseids, he put his shoes on and said "Right, let's go." Three nights in a row-- when I'm sure he'd far rather have been in bed-- he walked with me to the park, lending me an arm when my plantar fasciitis got too painful, and sat with me on a bench for a good long while, looking north.

We saw some good Perseids, including some beautiful bright ones. But that's not what I remember most about that time. What I remember is him, and us.
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:31 PM on August 15 [10 favorites]

There goes my dream of ever seeing the Milky Way I guess.

If you get to a dark enough place you can make out the Milky Way with the naked eye. From experience, even the light green level at Dark Site Finder should do it — here’s a timelapse I made last year in a light green area in Shenandoah National Park. I’ll admit, though, that on a trip to a bunch of National Parks in the western US in 2016, I nearly cried just from how clearly I could see it at Capital Reef. A few years later we took our nieces to the Grand Canyon, and it was clear enough that you could see the Milky Way stretch from one horizon to the other. A++++++++, would recommend.
posted by fedward at 4:14 PM on August 15 [1 favorite]

The logistics can be difficult if you can’t camp or stay in a lodge in a National Park, but Half the Park Is After Dark. Being able to walk out of our lodging and just be in the middle of that darkness was so affecting.
posted by fedward at 4:22 PM on August 15 [1 favorite]

Yaah fedward. I once camped at the Valley of Fire in Nevada. I can't say enough good things about the visitor center and the grounds. But just walking out at night, fearless, into the valley was epic. OK, sure, I could have been bitten by a snake or stabbed by a scorpion. But those dudes have to sleep sometimes, and yeah the glow of Las Veges lights was always over the horizon, but man! That feeling. Just me, a cup of green tea I warmed over my camp stove, and the whole universe spread over me.
posted by SPrintF at 5:07 PM on August 15 [1 favorite]

While I cannot imagine a day when I might possibly think that the universe has nothing left to show me, I appreciate the beautiful composite image.
posted by senor biggles at 5:11 PM on August 15 [1 favorite]

Thanks fedward. The closest I've ever gotten to anything like that was a trip to the far north of Sweden last winter. I had specifically gone to see the northern lights (which themselves were just mind-bendingly beautiful for the precious few hours of clear sky we had) but it was also my first time in my entire life visiting a Bottle 1-2 zone. Wrong time of year to see the Milky Way, but damn there was just so, so many stars!

I really want to get into it more, but my spouse is definitely not the camping or rural living type unfortunately. Maybe someday.

We don't look up at the stars any more because we can't see that there is something there to look at. When we stop looking at the stars, we stop being reminded how small we are and how much we need each other in this vast universe.

Yup, 100% this. I am not religious but this kind of stuff is about as close as I get. Sadly, looking up is impossible anymore. From where I used to live on the East Coast, you had to drive multiple hours to get to any actual dark sky. For the real good conditions in the big national parks and the like, you had to hop on a plane (or drive multiple days). People never get time off, so who is ever seriously going to do that?

I follow some astrophotography subs, and the people who do have time (in the US) are also regularly forced out or held by police because it's "suspicious", even on public land. They cannot grasp that someone would be out at night doing something non-nefarious. It's just sad.
posted by photo guy at 9:56 PM on August 15 [1 favorite]

While we are talking about Stonehenge - we could also note that the megalith used as the altar stone - has recently been discovered to have been moved there from north-east Scotland. That is a block 5 metres long and weighing 6 tons - moved a distance of 450 miles. - possibly from Orkney.

That fact - up there with the perseids in terms of wonder, I think.
posted by rongorongo at 10:42 PM on August 15 [2 favorites]