I. Have you ever wished upon a shooting star and wondered where it came from? A. It is said by Greek astronomer Ptolemy that shooting stars are the Gods paying attention to what we wish for. B. However what is a shooting star anyways? Where do they even come from? II. I am here to inform the class on what a meteor shower is, how they form, and how to observe them properly. III. This past summer, I was given the great opprotunity to view the Perseids Meteor shower where I saw well over 20 meteors across the night sky right here in the suburbs. IV. Meteor showers don't just happen whenever, theres actually a more complex way of when to view them, due to when and where they take place. There are actually specific dates and times on when they …show more content…
There is usually a confusion as to what the differences are between meteors, meteroids and meteorites are. A. A meteor is the orb of light seen from earth, otherwise known as a “shooting star,” whereas a meteoroid is the debris that falls from the meteor. B. Meteroites are the particles of the a meteor that can lands on earth. They can be found in various sizes ranging from the size of a grain of sand to the size of a boulder. These meteorites are said be trillions of years old, and it quite possible some can be older than earth itself. II. Meteor showers occur when dust and particles from asteroids and comets come into contact with the earth's atmosphere. A. These particles enter the earth's atmosphere at a high speed that causes friction between the air particles and the meteors, heating the meteors often creating a “firebal”. B. So what are asteroids? What are comets? 1. Asteroids are the pieces of rock that came from the asteroid belt between planets Mars and Jupiter. 2. Comets are similar to asteroids, however they are covered in particles like as ice and gas compounds. III. From personal experience of viewing a meteor shower, it takes a specific date, time, and location to properly view a meteor shower, even from a suburban
However, asteroids are much more deadly. If over-sized meteor can wreck buildings and injure people, then a normal sized asteroid can easily wipe out species if it lands in the right place. As mentioned before, asteroids are much bigger than meteor and much more rare. According to the “Mail Online” 12,000 years ago some type of asteroid slammed into the Northern Canada and some scientist believe that wiped off the mammoths and caused the “Younger Dryas”. Another famous event of asteroids striking, that many scientist believe, was around 65 million years ago asteroids rained and killed of all the dinosaurs 75% of all the life on earth.
Chondrites were made by the accretion of particles of dust present in the primitive Solar System which gave rise to asteroids over 4.55 billion years ago (SOURCE). These asteroid parent bodies of chondrites were small to medium sized asteroids that were never large enough to go through melting and planetary differentiation like Earth. Further evidence of age is shown through the abundance of non-volatile elements in chondrites which is similar to that found in the atmosphere of the Sun and other stars in our galaxy.[10] Even though chondritic asteroids never became hot enough to melt based upon internal temperatures, many of these asteroids did reach high enough temperatures to experience significant thermal metamorphism in the interior. T...
about to take place. All a meteor is, is a chunk of rock of that is being
Now that the history is covered, I can get down to the nitty gritty of how they are able to appear in the sky. Auroras are caused by the collision of e...
There are two meteor showers associated with Perseus—the Perseids and the September Perseids. The Perseid meteor shower is the most impressive one. It is visible in August, and the Perseus constellation is its radiant point. (Perseus Champion, Perseus Constellation, Perseus He-ro)
E. Preview: So, let's crash through the causes of tornadoes, twist around the types of tornadoes, and blow through some of the oddities associated with tornadoes.
I began my six-night observation of the moon on September 17th. Of the six days I observed the moon from my bedroom window at 9:30 P.M., I was only able to see the moon, a full moon, on the first day. While on the last day of observations, that being September 27th, I was again unable to see the moon at 9:30 P.M., I was able to see a low waning crescent at around 6:10 A.M from a different location. I concluded that my location of choice was not ideal despite it being my second attempt at observing the moon; my first attempt was set at 7:30 P.M. in the same location, which proved to be too early.
Most meteors burn up when they enter Earth’s atmosphere. There are a few meteors however, that make it to the surface. The ones that make it to the ground are called meteorites.
Every day we look into the night sky, wondering and dreaming what lies beyond our galaxy. Within our galaxy alone, there are millions upon millions of stars. This may be why it interests us to learn about all that we cannot see. Humans have known the existence of stars since they have had eyes, and see them as white glowing specks in the sky. The mystery lies beyond the white glowing specks we see but, in the things we cannot see in the night sky such as black holes.
I was born with an inherent fascination for all things celestial. Ever since I was young, I have been staring at the night sky trying to find constellations, or using my juvenile imagination to create my own. My efforts to find, view, and mentally catalogue everything the heavenly bodies have to offer has led me to employ some over-the-top measures, but the most extreme of them all might be the night I stayed awake through the wee hours of the morning to catch a glimpse of a meteor shower. Over the course of an entire year, the memory of this stupefying event is still as lucent and vivid as it was that very night so long ago.
Preventing a meteor impact depends on how soon before it hits that we find it. We have the technology right now to alter most meteor orbits away from earth. But if we never discover a meteor intercepting the Earth, these meteor 'weapons' are useless. Because much less than half of all near Earth objects are still undiscovered, we most likely will not have any warning before a meteor hits.
The Rock Cycle The Rock Cycle is a group of changes. Igneous rock can change into
Most big asteroids are ball shaped. Smaller asteroids, which are usually broken off of a larger asteroid, come in a lot of different shapes. All asteroids have craters that form when they bump or crash into other asteroids. The older the asteroid, the more times it has been hit and the more craters it has.
The second feature of comets is the coma. The coma is composed of atoms and molecules of gas that travels with the nucleus. The coma may be up to 100,000 kilometers in diameter. The third feature of a comet is the head. The head is just the name given to the coma and nucleus.