Celestial Fireworks

Image Description and Details : Perseids Meteor Shower is probably the most beautiful of all, because of the Milky Way aligning in south-west direction during this time of the year. This is exactly opposite to the radiant point of these meteors (Perseus Constellation) which is in the north-east sky, and hence the opportunity to see meteors flying over the Milky Way's galactic center! This is a stack of images collected over the nights of August 11th and 12th at Joshua Tree National Park. The lone Joshua Tree in front of the park's Jumbo Rocks area gave me a gorgeous foreground, thanks to Google Maps and an hour of scouting. Although my camera captured only 14 meteors along with a huge Fireball, we could see many more meteors outside the lens' field of view with our naked eyes and every single meteor had people shouting in joy.
The past few months and years have clearly shown the devastating effects of climate change and to add to the long list of consequences, the California wildfires from Climate Change also meant smoky skies for most of the northern part. Clear skies may not be on top of the priority list, but this would mean we can no longer preserve the natural beauty of night sky, thereby affecting the millions of animals and plants that need clear skies to survive at night. It's imperative that we all act immediately with small steps and preserve what nature has created for us having endured a multitude of external factors. Dedicating this post to the brave firefighters @calfire who have been battling to contain one of the biggest wildfires in recent history.
EXIF:
Foreground: Shot under blue-hour, Nikon D850, Sigma 20 mm f1.4 @f9, ISO 400, 60 secs exposure.
Sky: Tracked Milky Way shot at f1.8, ISO 800, 60 seconds exposure
Meteors: Timelapse shots at f1.8, ISO 800, 10 seconds exposure

Copyright: Arjun Raju