Chasing the Perseids

Chasing the Perseids Beneath the Milky Way

Every August, I look forward to the Perseid meteor shower. It’s a time when the night sky puts on one of its best shows, and this year I set out with my camera to capture not just the meteors, but the Milky Way stretching high above the trees.

As I reviewed my photos later, I noticed something curious. There were so many streaks across the sky—but not all of them were meteors. Thanks to some help I received recently, I learned something new: most of the long, evenly bright lines in my photos aren’t actually shooting stars at all. They’re satellites.

Here’s how you can tell the difference:

• Satellites appear as long, straight streaks of light. They tend to be uniform in brightness, and many of them are nearly the same length across a long exposure. Sometimes they even show up with a faint bluish tint.
• Meteors (shooting stars), on the other hand, look different. They can flare brightly for just a moment, often with a glowing head and a tail that tapers off. Their lines are not as uniform—they’re sudden, sometimes irregular, and they often stand out against the steadiness of the satellites.

Learning this changed the way I look at my night sky images. Instead of being disappointed that not every streak is a meteor, I feel even more amazed at how much is happening above us—meteors burning up in the atmosphere, satellites silently gliding in orbit, and billions of stars making up the glowing river of the Milky Way.

Standing under that sky, with my camera pointed upward, I felt small but deeply connected—reminded that every night, there’s a vast universe at work above us, whether we notice or not.

Have a Great Weekend,

Chasing the Perseids

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