                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2025 August 21

                               Mostly Perseids
                 Image Credit & Copyright: Klaus Pillwatsch

   Explanation: In this predawn skyscape recorded during the early morning
   hours of August 13, mostly Perseid meteors are raining down on planet
   Earth. You can easily identify the Perseid meteor streaks. They're the
   ones with trails that seem to converge on the annual meteor shower's
   radiant, a spot in the heroic constellation Perseus, located off the
   top of the frame. That's the direction in Earth's sky that looks along
   the orbit of this meteor shower's parent, periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle.
   Of course the scene is a composite, a combination of about 500 digital
   exposures to capture meteors registered with a single base frame
   exposure. But all exposures were taken during a period of around 2.5
   hours from a wind farm near Mönchhof, Burgenland, Austria. Red lights
   on the individual wind turbine towers dot the foreground. In their
   spectacular close conjunction, bright planets Jupiter and Venus are
   poised above the eastern horizon.

                     Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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