Perseid meteor shower bursts forth over Alishan, stunning night sky photos draw warm response

A breathtaking display of the Perseid meteor shower captivated observers, with a photographer from Chiayi capturing exceptionally beautiful images from Alishan National Forest Recreation Area. The peak of the celestial event occurred on the night of August 12th into the early morning of August 13th. This year offered particularly ideal viewing conditions, as the new moon meant no lunar interference, allowing for an estimated peak rate of up to 100 meteors per hour.

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The best way to appreciate a meteor shower is to feel it with your own powerful eyes. When a meteor streaks across your vision, that emotion will be unforgettable for a lifetime.

Photographer Li Chia-hao set up his equipment at the Xiaogusuan observation deck, situated at an altitude of 2,488 meters within Alishan. He spent hours, from late night until the early morning, taking over 1,700 photos. One particularly stunning shot, shared in the Facebook group "The Beauty of Chiayi," quickly garnered widespread attention and admiration from netizens.

Local expert Huang Yuan-ming, known as the "Alishan expert," emphasized that the most profound way to experience a meteor shower is with one's own eyes. He noted the immense difficulty in capturing such fleeting moments through photography, as meteors are brief and often not very bright, making them hard to record effectively. Huang described the shared images as precious, requiring significant effort, including tripods and long exposures, to achieve.

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But capturing it through photography is truly difficult because you can see it but may not be able to photograph it. Meteors appear for a very short time and are not very bright. Because they streak across the sky, they remain in your memory. But photography is very realistic; meteors that are not bright enough are difficult to capture with obvious effects in the frame.

Li Chia-hao explained his distinctive photographic technique. He first captured the landscape from the observation deck and then set up an equatorial mount on the deck's edge for the sky's base image. Another camera continuously photographed the northern or eastern sky, specifically to catch the meteors. Once the base sky image was complete, the first camera joined in to photograph other sky regions. Finally, all captured meteor images were composited into the initial base image, resulting in the astonishing depiction of the Alishan night sky during the meteor shower.

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So, the starry sky and Milky Way photos shared by photographers are the result of great effort. Not only do you need a tripod, but you also need long exposures to succeed, making every shot extremely precious.