Geminid Meteor Shower over Trin-Alcove Bend

The Geminid meteor shower is one of the two best natural fireworks displays of the year. It is also the hardest one to shoot because it peaks during the night of December 13-14th, when the nights are long, the air is frigid, and the weather is often stormy. The Perseid meteor shower, by contrast, peaks in mid-August, when the weather is usually balmy. Although it’s certainly possible to get clear skies in the mountains near my home in Boulder, Colorado, in mid-December, the odds are definitely against you. Southeastern Utah, although a long drive over often snow-packed mountain passes, is a much better bet.

Seven months before the December 2025 Geminid meteor shower, I had photographed the Milky Way arcing over Trin-Alcove Bend, a spectacular horseshoe curve along the Green River in the new Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness near Moab. As I began searching for the right spot to shoot the meteor shower, it occurred to me that Trin-Alcove Bend could be the ideal location.

After six hours of burning up the high-speed highways between Boulder and Green River, Utah, I turned south on the Lower San Rafael Road. A sign at the junction warned that the road was impassable when wet. Fortunately, it had not rained or snowed in many days and the road was dry. After 23 miles of washboard gravel road, I turned onto an unmarked 4wd road. I had identified this turnoff using the satellite photos available through Photo Ephemeris Web, then loaded the GPS waypoint into my GPS receiver. After a mile and half of moderate four-wheeling, I reached the end of the road.

A five-minute walk down steep sandstone slabs brought me to the top of the cliffs rimming Trin-Alcove Bend. It was time to decide on precisely where I would place the tripod. The radiant for the Geminid meteor shower – the point in the sky where all the meteors appear to originate – rises in the northeast around astronomical dusk. It reaches its highest point in the sky – 82 degrees above the horizon at the latitude of Trin-Alcove Bend – at about 2:30 a.m. It is about 45 degrees above the horizon and nearly due west at astronomical dawn. As I envisioned my final composition, the radiant for the Geminid meteor shower would be positioned roughly in the middle of the huge horseshoe formed by the river and would be approximately 50 degrees above the horizon. That meant I had a relatively narrow window to shoot the background sky. Too early, and it would be too low in the sky and too far left to create a pleasing composition. Too late, and it would be too high and too far to the right. Unfortunately, the forecast called for partly cloudy skies, perhaps clearing well after midnight – too late to shoot the background sky. If the sky was filled with clouds at the ideal time to shoot the background sky, all my planning and the long drive would be for naught.

I planned to shoot a panorama of the land around astronomical dusk, then shoot a panorama of the sky when the radiant was in the right position. When not shooting the background land and sky, I planned to have two cameras, each with a 24mm f/1.4 lens, mounted on a bracket with two tripod heads. The bracket, in turn, would be mounted atop a heavy-duty tripod. I planned to shoot 20-second exposures at f/1.4, ISO 2000, back-to-back all night, from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. the following morning, moving the two cameras periodically to keep the radiant in the frame. I would then sift through the thousands of images I captured to identify the ones with the best meteors and drop them into the background sky, arranging them so they all appeared to emanate from the radiant.

After walking back and forth along the rim, I made a final decision on where to set up the tripod and camera. I wanted the final image to show as much of the river as possible, but that meant placing the tripod perilously close to the cliff edge and a 200-foot drop. I reminded myself that a single misstep in the dark would be fatal.

I shot a few panoramas at sunset, then began to wait. At astronomical dusk I shot the land panorama, then set up the two cameras side by side, with the fields of view just barely overlapping, and began firing away. Clouds began gathering along the eastern horizon, directly in my field of view. I watched anxiously as they crept higher into the sky. At 11 p.m. I shot the background sky panorama, hoping I had enough clear sky above the clouds to provide space for the meteors I hoped to capture.

For several hours I saw only a few meteors, and I began to wonder if it was simply going to be a bad year for the Geminids. Midnight came and went. The rate of meteors began to pick up. Once the radiant moved to the south, around 1 a.m., I moved my dual-camera rig back up to the plateau where I had parked. The night grew colder. I had considered, then rejected, the idea of bringing the enormous down suit I wore shooting the aurora in the Yukon in March. Now I regretted that decision. To stay warm, I did the “Geminid jitterbug,” trying to generate warmth through movement. By now the skies had cleared almost completely. Every few minutes a bright meteor sliced through the cobalt sky, provoking a spontaneous “Wow!” At 2:30 a.m. the crescent moon rose and began to faintly illuminate the land. Astronomical dawn finally arrived. I shut off the cameras, made breakfast, walked back down to my chosen overlook, shot a few panoramas at sunrise, then collapsed into my sleeping bag for some much-needed sleep.

All told I had shot 3,089 frames I hoped would contain meteors. After returning home I spent 10 hours sifting through the images, then selected 63 of the brightest meteors. I stitched the land and sky panoramas together, then painstakingly added the meteors one by one. Although I certainly didn’t capture 63 bright meteors during one 20-second exposure, I did see them fall one by one during a single extraordinary night at a truly spectacular place.