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Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury
Explanation:
What are those curved arcs in the sky?
Meteors -- specifically, meteors from this year's
Perseid meteor shower.
Over the past few weeks, after the sky darkened, many images of
Perseid meteors were captured separately and merged into a single frame,
taken earlier.
Although the
meteors all traveled on straight paths,
these paths appear slightly curved by the wide-angle lens of the capturing camera.
The meteor
streaks can all be traced back to a single point on the sky called the
radiant, here just off the top of the frame in the
constellation of Perseus.
The same camera took a deep image of the background sky that brought up the
central band of our
Milky Way galaxy running nearly vertically through the
featured
image's center.
The limestone arch in the foreground in
Dorset,
England is known as
Durdle Door,
a name thought to survive from a thousand years ago.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: Perseids
Publications with words: Perseids
See also:
- APOD: 2025 August 12 B Perseids from Perseus
- APOD: 2025 August 3 B Milky Way and Exploding Meteor
- APOD: 2024 August 12 B Perseid Meteors over Stonehenge
- APOD: 2024 August 11 B Animation: Perseid Meteor Shower
- A Perseid Below
- Meteors along the Milky Way
- APOD: 2023 August 9 B Meteor Shower: Perseids from Perseus