{"id":65734,"date":"2026-09-12T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/?guid=efd0a1bb6660d6aa1a2d772988f117d9"},"modified":"2026-09-14T11:11:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T11:11:23","slug":"perseid-meteors-meet-mesmerizing-star-trails-over-egypts-western-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2026\/09\/12\/perseid-meteors-meet-mesmerizing-star-trails-over-egypts-western-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Perseid meteors meet mesmerizing star trails over Egypt&#8217;s Western Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n                            \n                            <article>\n                                <p>Astrophotographer Osama Fathi created this incredible view of Perseid meteors streaking through circling star trails above Egypt's Western Desert on Aug. 13-14, the night following the shower's peak under dark new-moon skies.<\/p><p>Fathi imaged the star trails in 240 consecutive 25-second exposures, which captured the apparent motion of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/57-stars-formation-classification-and-constellations.html\"><u>stars<\/u><\/a> in Earth's sky as they seemed to circle the celestial north pole and the North Star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/15567-north-star-polaris.html\"><u>Polaris<\/u><\/a>.  The length of each trail reveals how far the stars appeared to move as Fathi captured their ancient light with his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/sony-a7-III-review\"><u>Sony A7 III camera<\/u><\/a> and a 16-35 mm lens during the 100-minute shoot.<\/p><p>But Fathi wasn't alone beneath the desert skies as he captured the scene. <\/p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/content.jwplatform.com\/players\/9H2WQAZs.html\" id=\"9H2WQAZs\" title=\"Sept. 2026 Skywatching: Venus at Peak Brilliance, Harvest Moon & Saturn\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><p>\"Capturing this photo in Egypt's Western Desert during the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/32868-perseid-meteor-shower-guide.html\"><u>Perseids<\/u><\/a> was an unforgettable experience,\" Fathi told Space.com in an email. \"The night was exceptionally clear and I was surrounded by around 200 fellow astronomy enthusiasts sharing stories, stargazing and photographing the sky.\"<\/p><figure class=\"van-image-figure pull-left inline-layout\" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style=\"max-width:2048px;\"><p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:125.00%;\"><img id=\"yf7diVq7wyaLzur5xAC4zS\" name=\"Startrails3.jpg\" alt=\"Star trails circle above a desert at night as meteors streak through the sky.\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yf7diVq7wyaLzur5xAC4zS.jpg\" mos=\"\" align=\"left\" fullscreen=\"1\" width=\"2048\" height=\"2560\" attribution=\"\" endorsement=\"\" class=\"pull-leftinline expandable\"><a href='https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/yf7diVq7wyaLzur5xAC4zS.jpg'  class='expand-button icon-expand-image icon' ><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div><figcaption itemprop=\"caption description\" class=\"pull-left inline-layout\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Perseid meteors and satellites intersect star trails in the skies over Egypt. <\/span><span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">(Image credit: Osama Fathi)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><p>Perseid meteors appear as unbroken streaks of light, captured in a single exposure as tiny particles \u2014 often no larger than a grain of sand \u2014 burn up in Earth's atmosphere in the blink of an eye. <\/p><p>Dotted trails closer to the horizon depict the trajectories of satellites as they passed silently through the skies over Egypt's Western Desert. Fathi captured the landscape and starscape separately before combining, or stacking, the images into a mesmerizing image.<\/p><p>The result is a gorgeous nightscape that highlights the beauty of the natural landscape, the rotation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/54-earth-history-composition-and-atmosphere.html\"><u>Earth<\/u><\/a> and the natural light show of the Perseid meteor shower that we experience as Earth passes through the trail of debris shed by comet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/33677-comet-swift-tuttle-perseid-meteor-shower-source.html\"><u>109P\/Swift-Tuttle<\/u><\/a>.<\/p><div data-widget-type=\"review\" data-model-name=\"Sony Alpha A7 III\"><\/div><p>Want to capture beautiful images of the night sky for yourself? Then be sure to read our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/how-to-photograph-star-trails\"><u>guide to photographing star trails<\/u><\/a>, along with our picks of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/best-cameras-for-astrophotography\"><u>best cameras<\/u><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/best-lenses-for-astrophotography\"><u>lenses for astrophotography<\/u><\/a> available in 2026.<\/p><p><em><strong>Editor's Note: <\/strong><\/em><em>If you would like to share your photos of the night sky with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, name and location to spacephotos@space.com. <\/em><\/p>\n                                                            <\/article>\n                            \n                        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Osama Fathi captured this breathtaking view of Perseids cutting through star trails from Egypt&#8217;s Western Desert on Aug. 13-14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":937,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2894,2794],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astrophotography","category-stargazing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/937"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65734"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65835,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65734\/revisions\/65835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}