A video on YouTube by a local photographer is becoming an Internet highlight.
Tracy Rondeau is originally from Burns Lake but is currently living in Fort Nelson. It was there, over the weekend, that she set out to photograph the Perseid Meteor Shower.
"I went out thinking I would hope for meteors and do a bunch of stills, but when the northern lights appeared I abandoned that plan and caught this," she said.
She turned on the camera's video feature instead and the result is a one-minute film compacted from four hours of recording. It depicts a wild northern lights display in front of a distinct curtain of stars.
It is easy to get distracted by the stars rising and setting at the horizon line, or stare at the waves of aurora borealis, but if you concentrate on the middle-ground, indeed you can see little streaks where shooting stars join the scene.
"See how many meteors you can count. There are lots," said Rondeau.
She explained that the brightest flashes, a couple of light blasts at the bottom of the frame, clearly on earth not in the heavens, are the headlights of a vehicle driving nearby.
She and her camera were stationed at the Muskwa Bridge on Saturday night. She posted the video on her personal Facebook page and also her commercial page, Artography By Tracy. Hundreds of "likes" and hundreds more "shares" have happened since then, sending the video spiraling around cyberspace.
"I love to share the beauty of where we live with the rest of the world," she said.
For the real sights of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, the peak may have passed on Sunday/Monday night but the cluster of space rocks is still in our area of the universe for a few more nights.
"The Perseid Meteor Shower is perhaps the most beloved meteor shower of the year for the Northern Hemisphere," according to the science news service EarthSky. "No matter where you are on Earth, the best time to watch is between midnight and dawn. Just remember, there are really two meteor showers going on. One is the Delta Aquarid shower, which has a nominal peak in late July,, but actually rambles along pretty steadily from late July through mid-August. The other is the famous Perseid meteor shower, which always peaks around August 11 to 13. This year, the moon is out of the sky when the most meteors will be flying. For best results, find a dark location, and watch for at least an hour, or more."
At its peak, this shower could yield as many as 100 shooting stars per hour. In the day or two following the peak, you could still expect about 50 per hour.
These shooting stars are mostly from the debris cast off the tail of the Swift-Tuttle Comet that passes our orbit at about the same time each year. The rubble from this comet's wake hits Earth's atmosphere at about 210,000 km/h and the bright streak starts when they begin to burn from the friction of entry about 100 kms above our planet. The brightness of the meteor depends on its size and speed. A rare few even make it to Earth, becoming meteorites if they strike the surface.
For local celestial events of all kinds, contact the operators of the Prince George Observatory. The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada-Prince George Centre can be contacted via society president Blair Stunder at [email protected] or call the observatory at 250-964-3600.
