During the peak of the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower last weekend, skywatchers captured some stunning images of the "shooting stars" as they bolted through the night sky.
Eta Aquarid meteors started raining down on Earth's atmosphere in late April and will continue to spritz through the sky until May 20, according to NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. The most impressive part of this monthlong meteor shower happened during its peak, in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 6.
During the meteor shower's peak, astrophotographer Justin Ng captured an amazing time-lapse video of the meteor shower from Mount Bromo, Indonesia. The bright meteors lit up the night sky like lightning flashes, and one even left a smoke trail as it burned up in Earth's atmosphere. Using a Canon 5D Mark IV digital camera, Ng also captured a shot of the Milky Way and its galactic neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud, in the background.
Down in New Zealand, Harriet Thomas photographed several meteors streaking across star-speckled skies over the Port Hills. She took to the hills early Saturday morning to escape the light pollution from the city of Christchurch and snap a few photos of the Eta Aquarids. [The Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower in Photos]
Thomas mounted her Canon EOS 80D digital camera on a tripod, switched it into continuous shooting (or "burst") mode, and then kicked back and watched the show while her camera snapped away. With the camera set to shoot at 15- to 30-second exposure times, she managed to capture several meteors, some of which were brighter than others.
"The rock managed to get a good cast of light over it from someone pulling into the car park and shining their headlights over it!" Thomas told Space.com in an email. Despite the light pollution from the city below, you can still see a faint part of the Milky Way over the landscape.
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