Astronomical photo of the day? The film by Czech-Slovak authors captures Perseids

The selected image is divided into two halves. On the left is a photograph of Tomáš Slovinský, who photographed the Perseids from the Poloniny Dark Sky Park, which is an area with exceptionally little light pollution at the eastern tip of Slovakia. Horálek photographed meteors above the Seč dam, where the conditions for watching the night sky are less favorable. According to the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, about 1,000 more stars can be seen in the sky at the place where Slovenian took his pictures than at Horálek’s site.

The Slovenian could thus also observe up to a third more meteors, which disappeared in the overlit Seč sky. “So light pollution significantly robs observers closer to cities of the beauty of the dark starry sky and the rich meteor shower of Perseid,” said the Astronomical Institute.

Both photographers cooperated from the beginning, used the same technique for photography, took pictures with approximately the same exposure time, and then processed the resulting images with identical and pre-arranged techniques. They also carefully selected the time to take the pictures so that they would have a correctly oriented strip of the Milky Way, and the two photos could be combined into one whole, from which there will be a contrast in the light pollution in both places.

With the exception of meteors and the Milky Way, the resulting image shows three bright planets that adorned the night sky at last year’s Perseid maximum: Jupiter and Saturn in Horálek’s part, and red-red Mars in the Slovenian half.

Award-winning photos

Horálek’s photographs reach the prestigious NASA website regularly, the last time he appeared there at the end of July an image called Remembrance of Neowis. Perseus and the Lost Meteors is already the thirtieth photograph of Horálek, which American astronomers chose for their selection, and the seventh, which was taken at the Seč Dam. This is Slovenia’s sixth such success.

NASA’s Astronomical Image of the Day (APOD) is a prestigious award for the most interesting photograph of the universe, selected and supplemented by astronomers Jerry Bonnell and Robert Nemiroff for each day. APOD’s motto is “Discover the Universe” and since 1995, when the selection began, it has become one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. Accompanying texts are translated into 23 languages, including Czech.

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