Fireball Glory

A fireball flashes in the sky during the Perseid Meteor Shower in August. From the photographer: “Taken from behind my house in Anza-Borrego Desert in the Southern California. I had the camera running for three nights during the shower. Out of 1,737 shots this was the brightest capture. These meteoric ashes will ultimately fall to the ground and become part of our planet; in fact, 10,000 tons of this material falls to Earth each year… The Pleiades appears at top left center, Orion at bottom left center. And on the far left we can see the subtle bluish glow of the zodiacal light (extending from lower left toward the Pleiades) mixed with the wintertime Milky Way. The fireball left a smoke train behind it that twisted in the upper atmosphere winds and appeared on 62 of the following frames (for nearly 14 minutes) until it became too faint to see on the images.”

Click the second photo to see the meteor persistent train.