Perseid Meteor Shower

We haven't been getting out to do nature stuff in a little while. Knowing we wouldn't get out on Sunday, we decided to drive up to Rocky to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower. Katie proposed the idea to me, and I was surprised since she likes to be asleep by 9 pm on most days. But we hopped in the car a little after 7, got to the top of Trail Ridge Road around 9, and hiked on the Tundra World Nature Trail a half-mile to the top of the Roger Toll Memorial before sitting and watching the stars for an hour. We didn't get back home until midnight. Being out that late isn't something either of us could recall having done together.

Even though it was a very short hike, it was still nice to have gotten out and done something in nature. Rocky Mountain National Park was a great spot to watch the stars, although you could still make out quite a bit of light pollution from Loveland. The light pollution helped with getting my focus set right and wasn't in the direction that we were looking for the best meteors, so the light pollution didn't both us.

We were seeing one shooting star about every other minute. Upon looking at the images, there were meteors in almost every 10-second photo that I took which seemed crazy to me that we didn't see that many. But most of them were quite faint, and my camera was picking up on stuff that we couldn't see with our eyes. But since I had my camera on a tripod with a remote trigger taking photos one after another, it makes for a cool time-lapse. This photo shoot makes me want to do more astrophotography in even darker areas.