Each time Comet Halley swings by the sun, solar heating evaporates some of the ice and rock from the nucleus. The trailing comet particles are usually no bigger than grains of sand. Although they are very small, these tiny meteoroids make brilliant shooting stars when they strike Earth's atmosphere at nearly 90,000 mph! The Orionids meteor shower happens each year toward the end of October when Earth passes through the debris stream of Halley’s Comet.
We stood outside and watched as about 10 or so “shooting stars” streaked by Orion. The meteoroids are visible in the area of Orion and Mars in the south sky before sunrise. October 21st was the peak of the shower.
This link explains more about meteors and meteor showers: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/meteors-ez.html
This link shows the schedule for more meteor showers: http://www.space.com/spacewatch/meteor_showers_2007.html
And this link gives you a better idea of all the other things you can look for in our night sky: http://www.space.com/nightsky/
By the way, here’s Andrew’s favorite space picture. Back in 2004, scientists in charge of the Hubble space telescope must have been a little bored looking at visible objects, so they decided to spice things up by looking at non-visible objects. They focused in on a small, very dark region of space where there was absolutely nothing visible to earth’s telescopes. They wanted to confirm, by taking a very long picture of that area, that they were looking at the ‘end of space’. So, after THREE MONTHS of staring into that blank space, Hubble produced the following photograph.
Keep in mind that most of these tiny dots and swirls are either galaxies or CLUSTERS OF GALAXIES!!! Just to blow your mind, one galaxy is a collection of BILLIONS of stars like our sun!!!!!! If this doesn’t ram home the fact that we’re not alone in this Universe, I’m not sure anything will. It’s almost comical to think that scientists here on earth have a good idea of what life, the universe, and everything is all about.
2 comments:
Andrew showed me that picture once. I love his enthusiasm when he explains what it is. It's funny. "Let's take a picture of blackness way out there" and "BAM! Look what we found! OH MY!"
It reminds me of that last scene of Men In Black where the aliens are playing with galaxies as if they were marbles... It's totally like that... only without the aliens. and they're probably not marbles either... bah! You get what I'm saying don'tcha?
Amy--you've been tagged--check out my blog for details.
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