Once upon a time a wise animated cricket said something to do about dreams coming true and shooting stars, or maybe those were just immobile stars, oh well. Still when a shooting star passes overhead there is a mix of awe and fascination which is shocking for an event that lasts less than a second.
If I were to ask how large a shooting star is, I image from experience that the range of size would be between the size of a small washing machine and a decent car; the truth on the other hand is significantly more brilliant given the effect. for the most part a normal shooting star is between the size of a letter in this article to at most the size of a golf ball. Shocking then is it that such a small object can give off such a large amount of light? Not really...
When an object begins to fall into the atmosphere, it begins rubbing against atmospheric particles and while there aren't many atmospheric particles, the objects are moving very fast. Incredibly fast! That speed equals friction and that friction brings about heat and that heat messes with the external skin of the falling rock and that in turn emits a whole lot of light, for a second at least.
For the most part these dust bits fall to Earth like snow but every once in a while one will fall down and impact, or at least get close to impacting. For the most part these rocks are fairly loose and they explode before they hit the ground, hence blast craters. Occasionally one will be harder and thus we get meteorites which can unveil the history of the solar system.
Sometimes they also just pass through, say hello and go on their merry way, like the famous Grand Tetons Meteor of 1972.
May the stars shine brightly in your skies!
By the way based off of calculations the size of the meteor in the Grand Tetons picture is thought to be from about 3 meters to somewhere around 14 meters.
ReplyDeleteGreat video--I hadn't seen that before.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused about what you're saying about the size, though. Do you mean we see them as being the size of a letter but they are actually much larger? Is there a relationship between perception and actual size? Please clarify.
The average size of the object that creates a shooting star is around the size of a larger sand grain upwards of a golf ball. On the other hand they appear larger due to properties of light, for a more easily seen example, if you are driving down a road and you see a cars headlight, at most thats the size of a fist though from far away its nearly impossible to tell how large it is.
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