2025 Geminids + Repost

Image Critiques
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1

Repost

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Okay, I couldn’t wait till after the holidays. I had never experienced red airglow with such intensity. I thought something was off in my color balance and or light pollution was causing my issues. I abandoned my first sky layer when I was unable to eliminate or mitigate the red and chose a set of frames from later in the night with Gemini higher overhead when the airglow was less intense and I was able to tame it a bit. After doing some research I made the decision since this was a natural phenomena, I would need to embrace it. Returning to my original sky stack I processed the sky as I would a milky way image. The reposted image is the result. I also found a few more meteors to add.

Original

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Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

For the last 5 years I have been trying to capture a meteor shower. Up until this outing I had always returned empty handed, or with just a few pathetic meteors. Everything came together at Pinnacles NP this month and I finally had some material to work with. All total I had 135 frames with easily identifiable meteors. I took the best 23 and adjusted their paths to the radiant to create this image. Jupiter is the brightest ‘star’ in upper center. Just to the left of Jupiter the next 2 brightest stars are Castor and Pollux.

Specific Feedback

Is the repost too saturated? Too many meteors? Foreground too bright?

Since this is my first real attempt at creating a meteor shower image I am looking for any input regarding processing, color, foreground, composition etc.

Technical Details

Canon R6 w/ 15mm f2 Laowa lens
Sky Exposure 15 sec, f2, ISO 5000
FG 1/250 sec, f4, ISO 100 taken just before sunset
10 sky images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker for the sky layer
23 Meteors were masked and blended into the sky and foreground added in Photoshop

Critique Template

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Vision and Purpose:
Conceptual:
Emotional Impact and Mood:
Composition:
Balance and Visual Weight:
Depth and Dimension:
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2

Wow! I’ve been trying for longer than that and have captured maybe two traces!! We had fog forming by 9 pm for the peak night(s) so I didn’t try, although I was shooting M31 in the couple of hours after dark. A spectacular image!!! Is there a trace of aurora?

3

Thanks Diane,

It was a spectacular and rewarding night. I still have a few thousand images from 2 other cameras to go through. This camera had the highest number of meteor ‘hits’. The red in the sky appears to be Airglow. I am used to it being green, but apparently the red airglow is from “vibrationally excited OH radicals in a layer approximately 86 kilometers above the earth surface.” The green airglow is from oxygen molecules that are electronically excited. The first sky image I processed had the milky way (tail end) and was infused with the red glow. I was trying hard to eliminate the red, Looks like I should embrace it for the natural phenomena that it is. Look for an update of this image after the holidays.

4

Outstanding Paul! The meteors look like they are just raining down onto the earth. I would definitely call it a successful night, congratulations.

5

Holding my breath for the next images!!

6

@Diane_Miller , @Youssef_Ismail , @Kent_Bossange

I couldn’t wait till after the holidays. Thinking about how to process the sky with the red airglow was keeping me up nights. Let me know what you think of the results.

7

Triple Wow and a Holy Cow!! What an amazing night! I love them both – the new one is spectacular, but the original one has a very interesting vibe in that the meteors seem to coming from a more distant or gloomy place. And I love the hint of the northern Milky Way!