Explanation:
A mountain top above the clouds
and light-polluted cities
was a good place
to go to watch this August's
Perseid
meteor shower.
In fact, this composite picture from one of the highest points
in Romania, the Omu summit (2,507 meters) in the
Southern
Carpathian Mountains, captures about 20 of the shower's
bright streaks against a
starry night sky.
The cosmic debris stream that creates the shower is composed of
dust particles moving along parallel paths, following the orbit
of their parent comet
Swift-Tuttle.
Looking toward the shower's
radiant point
in the constellation Perseus,
perspective causes the parallel meteor streaks to appear
to diverge.
But looking directly away from the radiant point, as in this view,
perspective actually makes the Perseid meteors seem to be converging
toward a point below the horizon.
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