Geminid Meteors Over Teide Volcano

A photo composite of multiple exposures. As seen on Astronomy Picture of the Day the Geminid meteor shower is one of the best annual sky shows. This is a composite result of photos taken during about 2 hours of the shower highest activity on December 14, 2013. The frames with meteors are stacked to show the brighter Geminid meteors of the night that appears against constellation Orion. The snowcapped Teide volcano of the Canary Islands of Spain towers in the foreground. The star appearing just near the top of the volcano is Rigel. Although the asteroid dust particles that creates the shower are traveling parallel to each other, the resulting meteor streaks appear to radiate from a single point on the sky, in this case in the constellation of Gemini, off the top of the image. Like train tracks appearing to converge in the distance, the meteor radiant effect is due to perspective. The photographer has estimated that there are about 50 Geminids visible in the above composite image. Click the second photo to see a single exposure photo of this scene with a colorful meteor and the Orion Nebula (M42) above the 3718-meter Teide peak.