Like many in the UK in December 2023, I watched the weather forecast for the Geminid meteor shower peak deteriorate as the big day approached, but I was reasonably hopeful the Suffolk coast would get a couple of hours of at least partially clear sky.  So I headed over to the beautiful shingle beach at Dunwich, a few miles south of Southwold, and arranged to meet a couple of other stargazers there as well (not something I do very often - usually a solitary soul!).

As I arrived at dusk, cloud was prevalent, but Jupiter began popping out through the murk with increasing frequency, bolstering my confidence.  As larger breaks in the cloud appeared, it was clear this was a wonderfully dark site, and in fact later on it was possible to see the full Milky Way band from the Great Rift in the north west all the way through fainter Cassiopeia, Perseus and down to the Orion regions in the south east. The wind off the north sea was fairly brisk, but that all added to the atmosphere.

By around 8.30pm, meteors began dropping with a decent cadence.  At times I spotted 4 or 5 bright ones well within a minute.  Some were rapid - gone almost as soon as I spotted them.  But some were long, bright and seemed to laze their way across the sky, occasionally leaving bright trains that would fade over a few seconds.  Over the night I must have seen 60 or 70.

I set up a few timelapses to capture different compositions and did what I could to just sit back and enjoy the show (not something that comes naturally, especially when trying to make videos as well!).  The guys I was with were deep sky imagers, so it was awesome to give them a change of scene and enjoy the whole dome of the sky as it is put on this spectacle - I highly recommend it to anyone!  Great to have company for a change, too.

This image shows the wonderfully colourful region of Orion rising out of the dark skies above the North Sea with one of the beached fishing boats in the foreground. A great memory of a wonderful night.