There were plenty of caveats associated with the tau Herculids meteor shower. It could be a full-blown meteor storm or it could be a total bust. But there was a third possibility; not a meteor storm but a shower, or maybe a drizzle.

Of course I was hoping for the storm but was quite happy with the shower. I had a few ideas of how to shoot this but ended up going with the Keep It Simple concept. I ended up at a viewpoint on the west side of Mormon Lake and aimed the camera at the rising Milky Way.

A review of my images showed that I captured three very bright meteors and another six that were fairly dim. The first image is a composite of those images and shows the entire field of view from the ultra-wide 17mm lens. It has a field of view of 93° x 70°.

The next image is a tight crop of the three brightest meteors that also shows two dim meteors.

Time-lapse video of the three brightest tau Herculids meteors and some persistent smoke trails.

Finally, there is a time-lapse video of the three brightest showing the persistent smoke trails from two meteors.

It was a fun evening.

Edit: Fixed error in the field of view values.