The annual Perseid meteor shower occurs when debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle intercepts the Earth at a high velocity (59 km/s, 133,000 mph). This debris is somewhat diffuse, so we see activity for many days on either side of the peak. Like most meteor showers, this is named for the constellation its members appear to originate in: Perseus.
This is a composite image of 242 Perseid meteors collected between sunset on August 4 and sunrise on August 14. Since the images were collected over many hours, the radiant of the shower is not in a fixed location. However, because most of the meteors occurred between 1 am and 5 am, and because the radiant's high declination means it doesn't move fast, most of the meteors appear to point back to the same general area of the sky - just above the left center of the image. Note also that meteors farther from the radiant tend to make longer trails, since they have a smaller component of their velocity towards the camera.
All of the meteors in this composite are Perseids except for the two sporadic fireballs with obviously different radiants. Several showers are currently active (Alpha Capricornids, Southern Delta Aquarids, Kappa Cygnids), but meteors from these are not shown.
The southwest monsoon pattern generally affects weather in Colorado during August, and this year it is quite strong. There were thunderstorms until after midnight, followed by hazy skies, which reduced the number of meteors captured. The Moon did not introduce any interference this year.
Long string-like images are stars or planets captured as they traveled across the sky over many hours. Bright star trails are evident for Capella, Aldebaran, Deneb, Vega, and Altair.
This graph plots the distribution of 85 meteors brighter than magnitude 2 on the peak evening.