Comet and the Pleiades Meet Up in Meteor Shower in This Fantastic Photo

Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical "Skyscapes" that connect both Earth and night sky. Join him here as he takes us through his photograph "All Sky View of Geminids Meteor Shower and Comet 46P/Wirtanen."

Meteors, star clusters and a naked-eye comet light up the sky over Portugal in this full-dome fisheye photo captured during the Geminid meteor shower of 2018. 

This composite shows the radiant of the Geminid meteors, or the point from which they appear to originate, in the Gemini constellation and near the bright star Castor. Although Castor looks like a single star to the naked eye, a closer look through a telescope reveals that it's actually a tight cluster of six stars. [Awesome Photos! The Geminid Meteor Shower of 2018 in Pictures] 

Comet 46P/Wirtanen is visible as a greenish-blue speck of light in the Taurus constellation. The comet was visible to the naked eye during its historic close approach to Earth in December. Its brilliant coma is very well visible even in this ultra-wide-field view. High in the sky, and not far from Wirtanen, is the bluish cluster of hot, young stars known as the Pleiades. 

The image shows a full-dome view from the headquarters of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve in Portugal, on a moonlit night after the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. To create this composite, I combined eight separate meteor photos that I shot with an 8-mm fisheye lens over the course of 3 hours on the evening of  Dec.14, 2018. 

To see more of Claro's amazing astrophotography, visit his website: www.miguelclaro.com. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.