Kevin Palmer

  • Portfolio
  • Time Lapse
  • About
  • Archive
    • All Galleries
    • Search
    • Cart
    • Lightbox
    • Client Area
  • Links
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
x

Search Results

Refine Search
Match all words
Match any word
Prints
Personal Use
Royalty-Free
Rights-Managed
(leave unchecked to
search all images)
26 images found
twitterlinkedinfacebook

Loading ()...

  • During the Perseid Meteor Shower a satellite flared brightly above Beartooth Butte.
    Not a Meteor
  • A Geminid meteor burns up just below Polaris in Big Cypress National Preserve. I have never seen the North Star so low before since I have never been this far south.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: 12/14/2014
    Meteor Under Polaris
  • In early January is the annual Quadrantid meteor shower. Meteor rates weren't nearly as prolific as the Geminids of December. But I still wanted to photograph it since the moon phase was favorable and few pictures of this astronomical event exist. With decent weather in the forecast, I climbed to the top of a 9,477' mountain and spent the night there. The expansive views to the north included Meadowlark Lake, the tallest peaks of the Bighorns, and the High Park meadow. After chasing a mouse out of my backpack I set my camera to take pictures for most of the night. The shower seemed to be most active between about 10PM and midnight. That's when my camera captured these 8 meteors, although 3 of them were halfway out of the frame. I stitched together a few images for the bottom half of the picture, this allowed me to correct the distortion in the trees.
    8 Quadrantid Meteors
  • The Geminid Meteor Shower was very active in 2018. In this image I stacked a total of 90 meteors which my camera captured while pointed west. In about 5 hours and using 2 cameras, I captured a total of 350 shooting stars. It was a very active meteor shower this year. Near the top of the frame are the twin stars of Gemini, named Castor and Pollux. If you trace back the tails of the meteors this is where they appear to radiate from. The source of these streaks of light are small pieces of debris left behind by an asteroid, which burn up when they enter Earth's atmosphere at 22 miles per second. Thin clouds were making halos around the brighter stars. Overall the weather was perfect with the thicker clouds clearing out just as activity started to pick up after midnight.
    Early Morning Meteors
  • The milky way was shining brilliantly on the morning of summer solstice, the shortest night of the year. Thin clouds were making haloes around the brighter stars and the planet Saturn. A long exposure revealed colors invisible to the human eye, including green airglow and purple nebulae. There wasn't a meteor shower going on, but I captured this bright random meteor in one of the time lapse frames. On any given night there are an average of 6 sporadic meteors per hour visible under a dark sky. The skies here were very dark, with amazing views of the Bighorn Mountains in every direction. This was taken from a fire lookout tower on the 9,500' summit of Black Mountain.
    Solstice Meteor
  • On May 6, the earth's orbit brought it through debris left behind by Halley's Comet. This caused the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower. There aren't very many meteors visible in the northern hemisphere. But I did capture one from the top of Bald Knob in Missouri.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: May 6, 2014
    Bald Knob Meteor
  • At first it had the appearance of puffy clouds on the southeast horizon. Then as it rose higher the Milky Way revealed more detail. The clouds were made not of water vapor, but of stars too numerous and densely packed to resolve individually. The bright core of the galaxy is split in two by a dark lane of cosmic dust known as the Great Rift. The Milky Way was soon followed by the rise of Jupiter, and then Saturn. Meanwhile shooting stars periodically flashed across the sky during the peak of the Lyrid meteor shower. The Lyrids are the oldest known meteor shower, first observed 2700 years ago. Of the 15 meteors I captured, this one was the brightest. Devil’s Kitchen is a small basin containing badlands-type terrain, but it may as well have been another planet. It’s a barren wasteland located on the west side of the Bighorn Mountains filled with fascinating geologic formations of all different colors. When I first found it last summer I knew I had to return to shoot it at night.
    Night at Devil's Kitchen
  • My camera captured these 19 meteors in only 93 minutes starting around midnight on December 14th. I was a bit disappointed that my camera battery died after this because I wondered how many more I missed. Despite the moonlight many meteors had no problem shining through. I couldn't think of a better place to watch the Geminid meteor shower than this remote island in Everglades National Park. I paddled out the day before and spent the night on Picnic Key. A lack of sleep, sickness, and battling the tide the next morning made it an exhausting trip. But it was worth it to see the best meteor shower of the year.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: 12/14/2014
    Out of the Blue
  • Shooting stars fill the sky during the Geminid meteor shower above the Mississippi River Valley. In the 2 hours after the moon set, I counted about 90 meteors. I also enjoyed watching Comet Lovejoy rise through binoculars and with the naked eye. The comet and it's tail can be seen over the haze on the lower right. I couldn't have asked for better weather for this meteor shower. Wind chills were -15 the night before, and a big snowstorm was arriving in the late morning. But in between the skies were clear with mild temperatures in the mid-20's.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: 12/13/13
    Gifts from Gemini
  • For the Geminid meteor shower I snowshoed to the top of the continental divide in Western Montana. From the Granite Butte lookout tower, the views were stunning in every direction. The weather changed by the second alternating between snow showers, gale force winds, freezing fog with zero visibility, clear skies, and brief moments of calm. The tough whitebark pine trees which grow up here are all permanently bent. They point eastward from the prevailing westerly winds which almost never stop. The low temperatures, strong winds, and fog combined to create hard rime ice, which covered every surface (including me and my camera) with a coating up to 2 inches thick. To say that shooting conditions were challenging would be an understatement. My tripod had to be carefully propped up to avoid it blowing over. And with all my batteries dying too soon, I didn't get to take as many pictures as I wanted to. This was one of the brighter meteors which shone through the fog. The lights on the right are from the city of Helena.
    Through the Freezing Fog
  • A bright Perseid meteor burns up in the earth's atmosphere while the milky way stands on end in the west. After finding the nearby campground full, I drove a dirt road up to 10,000 feet until I found a spot flat enough to camp. With no trees up here, there was a great view of the sky and the lights below are from the town of Greybull. Over the 2 nights of the Perseid meteor shower in mid-August I captured nearly 1,000 images with about 10% of them containing meteors. This one was the brightest and the longest, spanning over 15 degrees of sky. I nearly missed it because it was the very first frame of my time lapse. Perseid meteors are made up of small pieces of comet debris that cross the Earth's orbit every year. It is the extreme speed at which it enters the atmosphere (over 100,000 mph) that causes the debris to vaporize and glow. The color of the trail reveals the chemical composition. The green is nickel or magnesium, and the red is ionized oxygen or nitrogen in the upper atmosphere.
    The Longest Streak
  • For the Geminid meteor shower I snowshoed to the top of the continental divide in Western Montana. From the Granite Butte lookout tower, the views were stunning in every direction. The weather changed by the second alternating between snow showers, gale force winds, freezing fog with zero visibility, clear skies, and brief moments of calm. The tough whitebark pine trees which grow up here are all permanently bent. They point eastward from the prevailing westerly winds which almost never stop. The low temperatures, strong winds, and fog combined to create hard rime ice, which covered every surface (including me and my camera) with a coating up to 2 inches thick. To say that shooting conditions were challenging would be an understatement. My tripod had to be carefully propped up to avoid it blowing over. And with all my batteries dying too soon, I didn't get to take as many pictures as I wanted to. But this was one of the brighter meteors captured, flying in between Orion and Sirius.
    Catching a Gem
  • In mid-August I photographed the annual Perseid meteor shower. But this was no ordinary year, as there were twice as many meteors as normal. Beartooth Lake, at almost 9,000 feet in the Beartooth Mountains was the perfect place to watch from. I was worried about the weather, with thick clouds at sunset and a wildfire only 7 miles away. But it ended up being a beautiful night. The show got started at 1AM when the moon set, leaving the sky completely dark. While listening to every little sound around me (this is grizzly bear country) I counted 250 meteors in 4 hours. This was one of 93 that my camera captured over  Beartooth Butte. The radiant (Perseus) was to the upper right outside of the frame. As dawn approached, fog swirled around the glassy surface of the lake. Hand warmers strapped to my lens prevented the glass from fogging up. I don't know how cold it was, but I do know my water bottle froze and I was snowed on at the pass earlier in the evening.
    Green to Red
  • In mid-August I photographed the annual Perseid meteor shower. But this was no ordinary year, as there were twice as many meteors as normal. Beartooth Lake, at almost 9,000 feet in the Beartooth Mountains was the perfect place to watch from. I was worried about the weather, with thick clouds at sunset and a wildfire only 7 miles away. But it ended up being a beautiful night. The show got started at 1AM when the moon set, leaving the sky completely dark. While listening to every little sound around me (this is grizzly bear country) I counted 250 meteors in 4 hours. With my camera pointed northwest at Beartooth Butte, I captured 93 of them. I combined them all into this composite image. The radiant (Perseus) was to the upper right outside of the frame. As dawn approached, fog swirled around the glassy surface of the lake. Hand warmers strapped to my lens prevented the glass from fogging up. I don't know how cold it was, but I do know my water bottle froze and I was snowed on at the pass earlier in the evening.
    Night of the Falling Stars
  • The Geminid Meteor Shower was very active in 2018. This view is looking south from Diamond Butte, Montana.
    Night of the Falling Stars
  • The milky way galaxy rises above Black Mountain while a Lyrid meteor pierces the sky.
    Milky Way and Lyrid
  • Hunting for the aurora from the mid-latitudes can be a frustrating endeavor. For every night that I've clearly seen the northern lights, there are 2 more where I've gone out only to see the aurora quickly fade or clouds overtake the sky. But perfect nights like this one make it all worth it. After NOAA issued a geomagnetic storm warning, I headed for the Bighorn Mountains. The aurora was obvious as soon as I stepped out of my car. But it was just a green glow without any structure or movement. At 12:30AM, the lights began to grow brighter. Pillars topped with purple and red suddenly rose up and moved rapidly back and forth. This is called a substorm. Charged particles in the solar wind causes pressure to build up against Earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field will suddenly 'snap' and the release of energy makes the aurora intensify. Substorms are unpredictable and often last only minutes. In this frame I caught a Lyrid meteor burning up above Steamboat Point.
    Dawn of the North
  • A Geminid meteor streaks across the sky above Picnic Key in Everglades National Park, Florida. The star Canopus is reflected on the water with the brightest star Sirius in the middle of the picture and the constellation Orion above. My flashlight lighting up the trees was actually unintentional. When a raccoon approached me I instinctively shined a light in its direction. The raccoons here are very bold because they have no source of freshwater and attempt to steal from campers.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: 12/13/2014
    Make a Wish
  • The twilight sky was beautiful early this morning. A very thin crescent moon was rising over Spring Lake. In the middle is the bright planet Venus. The faint zodiacal light can be seen extending diagonally between the two.
    Zodiac Twilight
  • In early January I stayed at this USFS cabin high in the Bighorn Mountains on a frigid night. The cabin was very rustic with no running water and only a wood-burning stove for heat. The walls creaked as they heated up and I quickly learned that it's a lot of work trying to keep a cabin like this warm in subzero temperatures. But it did have electricity, and I left the lights on to cast shadows across the snowdrifts. My goal was to capture the elusive Quadrantid meteor shower. It's rarely observed simply because the weather is rarely ideal in early January. The sky was mostly clear at 10pm, but then snow showers moved in and obscured the stars just before the meteors were expected to pick up. But it was still a cool experience staying in this old log cabin.
    Cabin Fever
  • It may have been past midnight, but this roadside pond was teeming with life that was very much awake. Green eyes reflected back at me as cows shuffled around. Bats swooped through the air to catch the swarms of insects. The calls of an owl, geese, killdeer, and other unidentified birds added to the chorus of crickets and squeaking mice. The water was a near perfect mirror, which is a rare sight in windy Wyoming. Earlier in the spring it’s necessary to wait until the early morning hours to see the Milky Way. But at this time of year the core of the galaxy is up completely by the time it gets dark. The shooting star was just an unexpected bonus. There was no meteor shower happening, but on any given night about 6 meteors are visible per hour from dark skies. These are called sporadic meteors, and somehow I captured 2 bright ones in less than an hour. In the center of the image is Jupiter next to the fainter planet Saturn.
    Second Sporadic
  • At 2:30AM my alarm went off after catching a few hours of sleep. The moon was about to set, leaving me with 3 hours of darkness to watch the Orionid meteor shower over Devils Tower. My camera captured this bright streak of light shortly before twilight began. But the fact that it appeared in 2 frames and lacks any colors suggests that it was a satellite flare and not a meteor. The diffuse glow rising up diagonally from the horizon is called the zodiacal light. Also known as false dawn, the glow is caused by the sun illuminating the dust which is shed by comets and asteroids in the inner solar system. This cone-shaped glow is projected against the constellations of the zodiac, which is the path that the sun, moon, and planets travel through the sky. I've seen the zodiacal light before, but never this bright and prominent. It can only be viewed from the darkest of locations, far away from light pollution, on very clear moonless nights.
    False Dawn and Iridium Flare
  • On a frigid winter night I rented the Muddy Guard Cabin from the USFS. The log cabin was very rustic with no running water and a wood-burning stove, but it did have electricity.  My goal was to capture the Quadrantid meteor shower, but it wasn't the best night for it. The clouds cleared somewhat in the evening, but came back later on as snow showers moved in.
    Thousands Above, Fifteen Below
  • In the Cascade Range in northwest Washington is a peak called Mount Baker. This peak is the 3rd tallest in the state, and is among the snowiest mountains on Earth. One winter saw a staggering 95 feet of snow fall, which is the most recorded anywhere in a single season. I hiked halfway up and set up camp on a ridge overlooking this volcanic peak. Into the clouds I ascended and waited until they finally parted just before sunset. My jaw dropped as the glacier-capped summit appeared high above me. But the view was short-lived as the winds shifted and brought in heavy smoke from Canada. Even though the meteor shower would be a bust, I was thankful to get this view, however brief it was. This volcano is still active with fumaroles found in the summit crater, but it hasn't erupted since the end of the 19th century.
    Between Smoke and Cloud
  • After watching the Geminid meteor shower, I was treated to a great sunrise over the Mississippi River. It was especially colorful during twilight. The flooded area is part of Ted Shanks Wildlife Area with the river to the left.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: 12/13/13
    Great River Twilight
  • The milky way sets in the west shortly after sunset. This was taken from the top of a hill prairie in Jim Edgar State Park. It was a great place to watch a meteor shower.
    Hill Prairie Milky Way