tumbling-perseid.jpg

This image shows a Perseid meteor tumbling as it enters the Earth's
atmosphere, resulting in a sinuous trail.

Photographed after midnight UTC on the morning of August 13th, 1993
about 15km northeast of Neuchatel, Switzerland, on Kodak Ektar 1000
film with an ancient Nikkormat with a Nikon f/1.4 50mm lens at full
aperture in a multi-minute exposure.  The meteor is travelling left to
right.

The image was scanned from a 3x4 cm region of a 10x15 minilab print
and contrast stretched with CPI Image-In to approximate the appearance
of the original print.  The image is corrected to screen gamma--if
you're viewing it on a system (such as SGI) which performs its own
gamma correction, try using "xv" and use ColEdit/Intensity to set
Gamma to about 0.5.

This image is in the public domain.

-- John Walker, http://www.fourmilab.ch/