Image Credit & Copyright: Sean M. Sabatini
Explanation: What’s happening in the sky over Monument Valley? A meteor shower. Over the past weekend the Leonid meteor shower has been peaking. The image — actually a composite of six exposures of about 30 seconds each — was taken in 2001, a year when there was a much more active Leonids shower. At that time, Earth was moving through a particularly dense swarm of sand-sized debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle, so that meteor rates approached one visible streak per second. The meteors appear parallel because they all fall to Earth from the meteor shower radiant — a point on the sky towards the constellation of the Lion (Leo).
Click to enlargen, well worth it.
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