Photographing the Perseid Meteor Shower from Michigan’s Keweenaw Dark Sky Park

The Perseid Meteor shower peaked Saturday night as the Earth passes through the dust left by the Swift-Tuttle comet. I think I saw more shooting stars, sitting out for the few hours that I did, than the total I have seen for the past decade.

The five shooting stars in this image are from a composite of three 15-second exposures (though the three meteorites on the right hand side were all from the same individual picture).

Also in this picture is an example of “airglow” a phenomenon similar to the Aurora but less intense. Airglow is caused by the steady stream of radiation from the sun and while it is not typically visible to the unaided eye, it shows up in long exposure photos.

Special thanks to the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, the Keweenaw Dark Sky Park, and Chris Guibert for hosting and organizing a Perseid Meteor Shower Party. There were about 20 Dark Sky enthusiasts and other photographers taking in the meteorite show and hanging out under the stars. It was a lot of fun.

Light Ripples

After a weekend of cloudy skies for the first Upper Peninsula Dark Sky Festival, the universe still taunted us with an amazing Aurora display that was mostly concealed behind a thick layer of clouds. However, that cloud bank stopped about 15 miles (by road…not direct line) from my house. So, we ventured further south to catch the lights of the north (as did about a hundred other people, too - evidenced by the line of lights coming down the bluff in the picture).

One of the things that I love about the Keweenaw is the interesting way nature mixes with remnants of human industrial history. This particular location is the ruins of an old copper mill. It has everything you would expect of an abandoned industrial complex - concrete, rust, broken glass, and graffiti. Juxtaposing all that with a mesmerizing giant solar storm in the atmosphere gives us an interesting perspective on the beauty and the hardship of the universe…and of the Keweenaw.

Snags in Winter Wetlands

I am fascinated by the importance and beauty of dead trees (aka: “snags”) in ecosystems. I’ve shared, in previous posts, why I consider them so important for ecosystems but I have never really shared why I find them so visually alluring. It might be because when I was a child, my family’s dining room had a picture that was drawn by the local art teacher which I, for some reason, found fascinating. It was a charcoal drawing on burlap of a collection of sparse conifers and snags in a bog - a very typical scene which can be found in many places across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I could look at it over and over again and see stories and history and biology. I see bogs with conifer trees pretty regularly whenever driving down just about any given highway in the U.P. - and every single one of them reminds me of that picture.

I don’t know if those landscapes are inherently beautiful or if they are just alluring to me because of the picture that hung in our dining room. In any case, the moment I drove past the location in this picture, I could see its potential. I have gone back to it time and again and it always presents a scene that is differently beautiful to me. Though, it never feels quite as full of life as it does when the night sky is dancing above it.