Shooting 'Shooting Stars'
Posted in Newsletter: 5/19/2004
What are shooting stars??? When can they be seen??? How big are they??? How high up are they???
Shooting Stars or Falling Stars are what many people call meteors.
Meteors are objects from space that become visible when they enter the Earth’s upper atmosphere. They become visible because they slam into the atmosphere at such incredible speeds, up to 70 km/s or 150,000 miles per hour. At this speed, the friction produced by the entry both disintegrates the object and ionizes atmospheric molecules, and this is what you see.
Most meteors are very small, about the size of a grain of sand. A pea-sized meteor will be very bright. Most meteor shower meteors are bits and pieces that have broken off comets. Meteor showers are annual events that happen when the Earth’s orbit intersects with the orbit of a comet.
Other meteors, not associated with meteor showers, are called sporadics and they are usually pieces of asteroids.
When an object that could become a meteor is out in space, it is called a meteoroid. An object that lands on Earth is called a meteorite.
By nature, we humans are full of curiosity about the world we live in. Over time we have developed a powerful method for answering many of our questions, we call this method science. To demonstrate the beauty and power of science, we invite you to participate in an experiment to determine the altitude that shooting stars or meteors enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
Project ZOMBIE, the first exercise in our Hands-On Astronomy program, is a simple and inexpensive experiment that uses photography and the principle of parallax to determine the altitude of meteors. ZOMBIE is an acronym for Zenith Oriented Meteor Baseline Imaging Explorer. To participate, all you need is the desire to and a camera that can take a long duration exposure, about 14 minutes. We are planning the first round of ZOMBIE imaging for Monday night, August 12th, 2002; this is the peak of the very reliable, annual Perseid Meteor Shower.
Project ZOMBIE has been made as simple as possible so lots of people can participate. It should be lots of fun. The procedure uses 'fixed cameras', cameras that are not moving relative to the Earth. But since the Earth is rotating your images will show star trails.
To find out more about Project ZOMBIE and how you may participate, call the observatory at 860 354 1595.