There was a post I put up on social media right at the end of 2023. It was taken in May of that year after an evening spent astro photographing at Lake Tekapo, I had zoomed across to Lake Pukaki to capture the sunrise over the Southern Alps via timelapse…
Unbeknownst to me there was a meteor shower going on (as I later discovered). I do remember thinking at Lake Tekapo ‘hmm, there do seem a lot of meteors about tonight?!?’, but I’d seen them there many times before (Lake Tekapo is a Dark Sky Reserve), so I just thought it was normal.
When I got across to Lake Pukaki it was about 5am and I was pretty tired, so I took a few astro shots with the big camera before I started to set up to capture the sunrise with the 360 camera. I again saw a few meteors but didn’t think I’d caught any on camera (bleary eyed and looking at the small screen on the back of the camera).
Reviewing the photo later I thought I had captured 5 meteors in one shot which was quite amazing. Then, preparing it for social media use on 31/12/23, I noticed a 6th one… and that is what I posted.
A few comments came in mentioned seeing 5 but not finding the 6th. That led me to re-look closer at the picture and I spied a 7th and 8th one. ‘Hmm,’ I thought ‘this getting serious!’. ‘I need to re-look at the original image and see if I can find some more’. So as the world partied into 2024 I re-edited the photo and studied it intently at full resolution.
To my absolute amazement I found 13 in there, that I am pretty sure are captured!
This is the original photo below that I posted to social media showing the original 6 meteors. And below that is a re-edited version showing the 13 meteors circled in red (which shows their width and trajectory) with zoomed in versions below that. Finally is the last picture of the morning at the same spot, looking to the right, after the sun had risen on Mount Cook / Aoraki.
I don’t think I’ll ever see anything like that again. Mother Nature and the Cosmos really outdid themselves that night…
