2020 Lyrids Meteor Shower

I set my alarm for 1:30 am on Wednesday, April 22, 2020 to view the Lyrids Meteor Shower peak. A weather forecast predicted clouds arriving after 3:00 am, so I chose this slightly less desirable earlier time. At 1:30 am the sky was clear but hazy. Temperature was 42 degrees F and 58% humidity. My Nikon D7200 DSLR camera was set up from my back deck on a tripod with a remote cord to continuously capture shots to stack together as star trails later in post processing. The image above looks northeast from Brentwood Drive in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It is a 10 second exposure at f/2.8, ISO 800, 16mm focal length, captured at 1:45 am CDT. An additional fainter meteor streak (from 2:10 am) has been added to the image at right center, just right of the radiant constellation Lyra, featuring its bright star Vega.

This image is a combination of 192 separate images, stacked together in StarStaX 2, creating a star trails image. Each of the images are 10 second exposures at f/2.8, ISO 800, 16mm focal length. Total photographing time was from 1:38-2:11 am. The annual Lyrids meteor shower is created when during late April our Earth crosses through debris from the orbital path of the Comet Thatcher. The debris enters Earth's atmosphere at 110,000 miles an hour and are vaporized into the bright trajectories of light we see from the ground.