Perseid Meteor Shower August, 2021

The annual Perseid Meteor Shower peaked August 12, 2021, which was a partially cloudy night for Badlands Observatory. The following night however, turned out to be much clearer and there were still some bright meteors to be seen.

We set a camera on the Observatory roof and streamed the event down to our ultra-short throw laser projector and 110” screen on our Observing Deck. It was a great way to view the show!

We produced a time-lapse show with the images taken over 3.5 hours (https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music) and captured some pretty good bright meteor images as well.

Within the footage we noticed a couple of bright objects that appeared to fall from the sky in a slow descent.. lasting about 20 seconds. Initially in the images, they looked like stars, so were not detected until the images were compiled into a time-lapse. The mystery continues as to what these objects were.