Redhawk Caldera two minutes to midnight

Takes place the evening of June 30, 2017.

Happy National Meteor Watch Day, Redhawk Caldera!

 

The end of the month was marked by what felt like a particularly early sunset. The sun seemed in a hurry to dip below the horizon, leaving in its wake a brilliant green flash, quick as an errant thought. The cloudless summer sky was a swirl of purples and blues; and when the waxing gibbous moon tiptoed up through the tenebrae, her light shone especially brightly.

Though the moon was still about a week shy of her full illumination, her unnatural luminescence and the pale cyan halo that appeared around her made it seem that she’d skipped ahead in the lunar cycle. Moondogs glimmered to life like a pair of symmetrical parentheses — and then, in scant trickles at first, the stars began to dance across the sky.

They came in ones and twos — trios and quartets, quintets and sextets — and then they lanced the darkness in the tens and twenties, filling the balmy summer night with kaleidoscopic light.  The stelliferous light show was bound to last for a few days at least, but this was its brightest hour. The green-carpeted slopes were illuminated, along with the jagged crags and rugged terrain; and the reflection of the meteors on the smooth surface of the lake created a mesmerizing mirror effect.

posted by coelacanth.