Further to the post I put up of the Meteors over the Southern Alps in New Zealand, here’s a bit more detail on it.
It was taken in May of 2023 after an evening spent doing astrophotography 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 that night ‘hmm, there does 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 (1 satellite) in one shot which was quite amazing. Then, studying it more intently I found more. At first 6, 7 and 8 streaks of light and thought ‘mmm, this getting serious!’. ‘I need to re-look at the original image and see if I can find some more’. So I got the original out, blew it up to 100% and began searching…
To my absolute amazement I found 13 in there, that I am pretty sure are captured – admittedly a number of them could be satellites (the bottom of the 3 in parallel at right is definitely a satellite). It’s very hard to tell on the fainter ones if they are satellites or meteors, but there’s a few in there.
This is the original photo below that I posted to social media showing the original 4 meteors and 1 satellite. And below that is a re-edited version showing the 13 streaks 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 onto 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…
