It is the week of the new moon and I am photographing the Milky Way, star trails and a bonus this week, the Perseids Meteor Shower outside Santa Ynez and Lake Cachuma. In addition to the Perseus in the northeast sky, there are also two other meteor showers going on. In the south, they are the Capricornids and Aquariids.

I have one more night to photograph and it promises to be a clear night. I am doing a bit of post processing during the day, but I do not have my big monitor with me, so it is not a fine tuned image I am posting. So no judging please lol ;)

Here is an image of a GIANT green fireball next to the Milky Way. I used Google AI to find out where the green meteor came from. I gave AI the time and location. I was expecting it was Capricorns or Aquariids because my cameras were pointing south. BUT NO! It was a meteor than emanated from the Perseids constellation! The Perseids are in the northeast. The Milky Way is in the southern part of the sky. I was shocked when I read this! That meteor traveled all the way from the northern sky to the southern sky!

Some of you want to know how I process my images. There are a couple of different exposures going on here. At night time the foreground is always darker than the sky. Both sky and foreground need to be photographed at the proper exposures. This image is a blend of a Blue Hour foreground image so I can capture the detail (and in this case, cows) while there is still a little bit of light before night time. Otherwise the foreground is black. Black foregrounds do not appeal to me in the least. Can you see those uplights under the oak trees on the right? A long exposure makes those lights glaringly bright and ruins the foreground. I shoot the sky as a time lapse at the proper exposure. That is the only way to get the meteors in my shots. So I have over 500 images from this camera. I shoot with two cameras with two different wide angle lenses.

I'll have this image printed for you to see during the Fall Tour, October 10-12, 10am-5pm. Or you can contact me if you do not want to wait that long to see it. lindsay.thomson.art@gmail.com, 805.272.5990