Understanding of Shooting Stars

Understanding of Shooting Stars: If you are an astronomical fanatic that is as serious as most of us, you might be able to remember that one event in childhood began you along this exciting hobby. Maybe it's the first time you have looked through a telescope. But for many of us, it is the first time we see a rain of fire from the sky that we finally know as meteoroid rain.

Understanding of Shooting Stars

When you look at the first, it's easy to remember the film "world war" or other extraordinary alien images entering our atmosphere in droves to take over the planet. But with some clues and an explanation of what was happening, we finally learned that this rain was not threatening at all or any invasion. Most meteoroid rains are harmless, part of nature, and very fun to watch.

So what are the strange lights in the sky? Are they aliens attacking from Mars? Did the comet come to start the next ice age? Or maybe an asteroid that burns when it enters the Earth's atmosphere. The answers to the above questions are not for the first and "yes and no" for the other two.

A meteoroid is actually a small piece of space debris, usually a small dust or stone that originates from a comet or a breakdown of asteroids in space and which eventually drops to earth. We say "towards the earth" because the light you see is the friction of the atmosphere that burns the tidbits of that small space and creates a spectacular show for all of us when they do it. A very interesting time to watch is when a meteoroid breaks or explodes when entering. Exploding meteoroids are called bolides.

There are some interesting details about the life of a meteoroid that makes the appearance of shooting stars more enjoyable. To be seen, a meteoroid only needs to weigh as little as one millionth of a gram. But the thing that makes them so spectacular to look at is the incredible speed they reach when they enter the atmosphere. Before it burns, the meteoroid will reach between 11 and 74 kilometers per second which is 100 times faster than a fast-moving bullet.

We tend to think that seeing a shooting star is a strange event and we associate it with superstition (hence, hoping for a lucky star). But there are actually thousands of them every year so it's very rare to see it. In fact, scientists tell us that more than 200,000 tons of space material enters the atmosphere every year and burns when entering.

Comets are a large source of meteoroids because of the nature of their long tail. Large amounts of dust, ice, and other space debris are trapped in the comet's tail as it moves toward the sun. Then when the comet moves away from the sun in its orbit, tons of these things are thrown into space to spread. When the Earth moves in its regular orbit around the sun, it often crosses the clouds of waste material which is one of the "meteor showers" that are so popular to see.

This falling star rain is easy enough for astronomers to predict so you can get into a position to see the excitement at the right time at night and see the area right in the night sky. Usually a magazine or astronomy site will give you a general time and location to be ready to see when the meteoroid starts falling.

Now keep in mind, this is a natural phenomenon, so it might not pay attention to the time table correctly. Also note that there is a system of notation for meteoroid showers that will occur based on the background constellation. The sky part to focus on the show is called "glow" because that's where the incoming meteoroid starts to glow or radiate. Radiant is named for the closest constellation. So if a meteor shower will occur in the constellation Leo, then the beam will be called Leonid. This will help you outline the asteroid rain list in publications.