Meteors - Shooting Stars

What is a meteor?

Meteors or shooting stars, as more widely known, the streaka of light produced when a Meteoroid burns in the atmosphere. It looks like a star falls to us, because they are flashing about us. The meteoroids, the meteors are dust and stones in space.

Comets and asteroids are the two main sources. In coming close to the sun, the comet dust and loose fragments, while losing asteroid fragments collide when read together. As the earth moves along its orbit in, meteoroids hit the upper atmosphere and hurtle toward Earth's surface. Once in the atmosphere, the friction between the Meteoroid and air molecules often produces short stretch of light that we call a meteor.

Most meteors typically measure 1m and over 20 km long and consists of a cylinder of excited atoms and molecules. They are usually from 120 to 80 km above the Earth's surface.

To make a meteor Meteoroid needed a mass of only one millionth of a gram, but at an enormous speed travel somewhere between 11 and 74km/sec (up to 100 times faster than a rifle bullet). The factors affecting the luminosity of a meteor, the size, speed, mass and structure of the Meteoroid material. Large meteoroids, which produce more meteors on a scale of -10 called fireballs. Tens of thousands of them fall to earth every year around five thousand which dissolve and explode. These meteors are called explosive cars.

Perseid meteor Around 220000 tonnes of space dust enters the atmosphere each year. Most of it is from the tiny particles, which produce meteors.

Sporadic meteors are either (a random meteor) or a shower (this is in the meteors occur regularly, with a projected date and time, from the same region of the sky, annually).
Meteor Showers

Meteor showers occur when the Earth moves through a stream of particles of a decaying comet. This is because comets store enormous amounts of material for each orbit. Some of the biggest surpluses and Halley Comet Encke. Meteoroid dust blown away from the comet nucleus of gas. Most will be lost if the comet is the closest to the sun. A meteor stream developed along the orbit of the comet and is always doing something completes other comets orbit the sun. If the parent comet finally disintegrates, it means the end for a certain power as they are not regularly renewed and its particles into space disperse.

As the earth moves along its orbit around the sun, it moves regularly through streams of meteoroids. Therefore Meteor showers are regular and predictable events, and there are more than 20 per year.

These showers can be used at specific times. In these few days, there is a maximum, a time when the hourly rate of meteors is to a maximum amount. Note that the exact date and time of the maximum differs slightly each year. The brightness of the moon in the night can greatly affect the number of meteors visible to the naked eye. The maximum hourly rate is the number of meteors seen by an observer, has the best conditions to watch.

Another important point which is important in the advertisement meteors, is the position of the radiant heat. The radiated power is the point in the sky, from which a specific shower meteors seem to radiate. The constellation in the radiant heat of a particular shower is also its name, as the radiant heat of the Leonids is in Leo. The meteors in a shower are indeed travel in parallel lines, they seem only to radiate from a point, since train tracks appear to radiate from a point, since train tracks appear to radiate from a point in the distance.