shootingstar

This Once-in-a-Lifetime Meteor Photo Was Captured by Accident

There are some types of photography that can be planned down to the tiniest detail. Capturing shooting stars? Not so much. This picture-perfect photo of a meteor is one of photographer Prasenjeet Yadav's most popular shots, but it's also perhaps his luckiest: it was captured accidentally while he was asleep.

Photographer Captures Shooting Star Exploding in Front of a Comet

Montreal-based photographer François Guinaudeau went out a couple of nights ago to shoot Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner during the Perseid meteor shower. As he was capturing photos of the comet for stacking, a shooting star flew into the frame and exploded near the comet. Above is one of the photos that resulted.

This Time-Lapse Caught a Meteor Explosion and a 40-Minute Orange Plume

Photographer Nao Tharp of Los Angeles, California, just released this short video that shows something neat he captured on a freezing cold winter night back on December 12th, 2015. While shooting a time-lapse of the Geminid meteor shower at Red Rock Canyon State Park in California's Mojave desert, his camera caught a bright meteor explosion and a resulting orange glowing plume that lingered for about 40 minutes.

The video above shows the same explosion at different magnifications and playback speeds.

How to Take a Self-Portrait with a Shooting Star

With a little bit of patience and a whole lot of luck, I was able to capture this photograph of myself perched on a rock above the Pacific Ocean. When I set out to photograph the annual famed Perseids Meteor Shower last week, I had a specific goal of capturing a "selfie" photograph with myself in frame and hopefully a meteor streaking overhead (along with a variety of other images throughout the evening). My hope turned into reality in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Near-Earth Asteroid 2012 DA14 Captured in a Gorgeous Time-lapse Video

On Friday, February 15th, 2013, near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 did a flyby of our planet -- the closest approach ever of an object of its size (30 meters in diameter). Photographer Colin Legg of Western Australia decided to capture the close pass in a time-lapse video, and set up his cameras after midnight around 220 miles east of Perth.

He ended up capturing the amazing video above, while captures a shooting star burning a trail across the sky while DA14 slowly travels through the shot. The video also shows how much random stuff in the sky you can see if you have eyes/cameras sensitive enough to see it.

A Lucky Picture-Perfect Snap of a Fireball Zipping Across the Night Sky

Walkthroughs of photographs that aren't easily reproducible (or are impossible to reproduce) might not be very useful to many, but it's still interesting to learn how rare shots come about. An example would be the photograph above, captured by photographer Bryan Hanna last week. Hanna was aiming to capture a long-exposure nighttime photograph of a landscape in the foreground and the night sky in the background, but he accidentally snagged something even better: a fireball zipping across the sky in just the right area in the frame!