Tucson Tim and hha1

The photograph was extremely lucky.

Years ago I used to sit outside with my camera during meteor showers and try to take a picture of a "falling star" and despite using rolls and rolls of film, and hours upon hours of time, I never got a decent picture, too faint, or just a fragment at the edge of the film.

The picture is cropped to the edge of the shot, presumably the streak continues further.

If you look closely it is possible to see variations in the brightness of the falling meteor. There even appears to be a spot flash, which may be actually a star. If I used a longer exposure it would have helped differentiate the burst from just a very coincidental path in front of a star. It appears that towards the end of the path observed, there are some signs of the intensity of the starting to fluctuate towards a dimmer state.

It seems unusual that I saw 3 falling meteors with in a 30 min period. Perhaps this mini shower is associated with some ancient, forgotten comet. (Actually all comets are ancient, forgive the melodrama, but astronomy just taps into these kind of thoughts).

snowflake aka john kulick