Geminid meteor shower fills the sky with 'shooting stars' in spectacular time-lapse photos

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Over 100 meteors can be seen in these images, which consist of two nights of observations.

streaks of bright light crisscross the night sky above a tree-lined lake
(Image credit: Miguel Claro)

Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical "Skyscapes" that connect both Earth and the night sky.

This image of the Geminid meteor shower is the result of a fair amount of work consisting of aligning stars aligning and combining ten folders that each contained hundreds of gigabytes of photos. The images were captured from Dark Sky Alqueva Researve in Portugal.

The meteors were captured by different cameras that I set up for two consecutive nights during the 2023 Geminid meteor shower. I managed to catch more than 100 meteors in total, from the brightest ones to the faintest streaks.

This composite shows the shower's radiant (the point from which a meteor shower appears to originate) located in the Gemini constellation. In the photos, due to the cameras' perspective the meteors appear to originate from near the blueish star Castor, one of the two "twins" of Gemini.

bright streaks of light crisscross the starry night sky

(Image credit: Miguel Claro)

The background is a panoramic image made of single untracked shots where a starry sky shows the path of the Milky Way, full of beautiful bright constellations and nebulas, shining in reddish hues from hydrogen emission.

At the left of the image, is one of my students enjoying the starry sky near Alqueva Lake while all the sky is fulfilled by meteors.

I also have a 360 VR version of the photo on my website for a full immersive experience.

Fine art prints

pictures of the sun, a colorful cloud of gas and streaks of light in the night sky

(Image credit: Miguel Claro)
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Miguel Claro
Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory photo ambassador, a member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical skyscapes that connect Earth and the night sky.