A meteor caught on camera from my backyard. This one is in the constellation of Lyra. Hence a Lyrid. An annual meteor shower which peaked in 2020 on April 21-22.
The trail goes from green to yellow to red probably a sign of dropping temperature as it burns up. The bright star Vega (alpha Lyrae) is in the background.
As the earth orbits the sun it runs into debris left behind by comets which (mostly) burn up in the atmosphere (and occasionally cause dinosaurs to go bye bye). This comet last visited in 1861 and is estimated to come back every 415 years.
Here is a picture of the constellations in view as seen with an ultra-wide lens. Cygnus the swan, Aquila the Eagle and Draco the dragon. The nature of the lens takes in a wide swath of the sky. This is a necessity in the image capture process of setting the (largest possible) “mouse trap", since one doesn't know where the meteor will appear, even if the radiant is known in this case to be near Lyra. But when reproduced on the same space, it appears as a compressed /scaled down image.
Seen with naked eyes though, the constellations appear expansive and overwhelming.
Perhaps the most majestic of the three is Cygnus the swan, which flies with its wide outstretched wings and long neck craning down along the Milky Way. Three bright stars mark the leading edge of its wing and Deneb, the brightest in Cygnus shines at its tail. Halfway down its long neck close to the visible star eta Cygni, lies an invisible X-ray source Cygnus X1. It is now known to be a black hole whose existence is made famous by the debate and wager between Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne.
Aquila the Eagle also has a bright star Altair, at its tail. In Greek mythology the Eagle bears the thunderbolt of Zeus, the king of Greek Gods (Zeus has similar powers like Indra, the Hindu king of Gods, who also wields the thunder). In Hindu mythology Aquila is identified with Garuda, a legendary eagle like bird which is the vehicle of the God Vishnu, protector and symbol of courage. It is fast, shape shifting and can go anywhere and whose flapping of wings can stop the spinning of the earth, heaven and hell.
Draco the dragon is the least prominent of the three. But if you can spot the stars that make up its body - you can see it literally snakes its way through the northern skies.
On the lower left corner of the image, is a tiny little bit of my backyard fence. It serves as a well grounded reminder of my earthly viewing post of a heavenly story that fired the imagination of our ancestors over millenia.
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