Head in a box and a head full of stars...

Wow! What a photograph, and no it isn’t mine I’m afraid, I only wish it was.

It was taken by David Kingham over the Snowy Mountain Range in Wyoming - I'm not even sure where that is. This is what he said about it:

"Last night I ventured out to the dark skies in Wyoming to see the Perseids meteor shower in all it's glory. I've been to a lot of dark sky areas but the stars at Snowy Range seemed brighter than any I've seen before. I photographed the sky for 7 hours and captured 22 meteors which I composited into 1 image. Please share if you like this!"

Of course I had my own Perseids meteor shower experience and this is what I said about mine afterwards.

Last night I ventured out into the too-ambient-light-bright skies of Manchester to see the Perseids meteor shower in all its glory. There’s a really bright street light across the road from my house and the glare from it was terrible. To make matters worse the shower was taking place not in the dark skies to my left, but in the Manchester lighted skies to my right, so even if I could have been bothered I don’t think I’d have got a half decent photograph.

I sat on my bench at the front of my house gazing at the hazy skies. The thin layer of cloud that had hidden the stars earlier began to drift away, and all at once the sky was clear - still glowing with ambient light, but at least I could see a few of the brighter stars above me.

I looked around; how wasteful my neighbours were - a dozen outside and porch lights glared back at me, a few of them had left their house lights on - away probably, others had spotlights illuminating their drives… and then there was that bloody billion watt streetlight to contend with.

It was useless, I might as well give up… and then I had an idea.

Going into the house I found myself a large cardboard box and with a sharp knife cut a hole for my head and another to use as a viewing panel. I looked at my ambient light reduction unit… this was never going to work. Still, it was worth a try.

So, back to my bench on my front drive, fifteen feet or so from the pavement, forty minutes past midnight and in full view of any passers-by I placed my head inside the box, tilted back my head and looked up at the skies. The glare, whilst not entirely neutralised, was much reduced and my box – or rather my  ALRU (ambient light reduction unit) was working!

Over the next hour I saw six shooting stars, three really bright ones, three quick darts of light and another caught from the corner of my eye. I watched a satellite high above my head traverse the deep-blue firmament and the more I stared the blacker the sky seemed to become. Each time I saw a shining shooter an involuntary ‘YES!’ escaped from my mouth; and within an hour I’d seen almost as many shooting stars as I’d seen in all the days of the rest of my life put together.

Yes, I must have looked odd – a middle-aged man sat on a bench in the darkness with a cardboard box on his head, loudly exclaiming ‘YES’ every now and again. I must have looked like some sort of strange cardboard alien - but it didn’t matter.

I was seeing and living magic.