Questions tagged [meteor]
Questions on objects passing through the atmosphere which leave visible wakes of incandescent material.
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Why is the Department of Defense so sure CNEOS 2014 is from outside the solar system?
From what I could understand the speed of 45 km/sec was one of the characteristics that lead to the conclusion that CNEOS 2014 is extra solar. I assume the object had to be tracked by NORAD in 2014? ...
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How to tell if a meteor video or photograph is fake?
With the Perseids at their peak, many people are sharing amazing photographs and videos — and some of them clearly more exercises in special effects than actual sky-watching.
My daughter's friend sent ...
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Trying to identify what I saw in the sky
This occurred at around 12:45 AM on Saturday August 12th somewhere in the center of Nantucket Island Massachusetts. We were trying to spot the Perseids meteor shower when I noticed a strange green ...
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how big would an asteroid have to be to leave a crater on Earth
if an asteroid were to hit earth, how big would it have to be to make a crater and not just vaporise in the atmosphere?
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Which kind of celestial body killed dinosaurs?
Well, the internet lies a lot, so there's so much information mixed with misinformation...
Some sources call what killed the dinosaurs an asteroid and others a meteor.
Is there any consensus on this?
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If two asteroids will collide, how can we call it?
If a smaller celestial body collides with a larger celestial body, but neither is classified as a planet, what do we call the smaller celestial body that collided with the larger one?
Asteroid/...
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How to calculate solar ecliptic longitude
I would like to write a small script to calculate solar ecliptic longitude in relation to different locations and dates. For instance UTC + - 1...2 etc..
I know, solar ecliptic longitude is the ...
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How fast would a one mile asteroid have to go for it to match the impact that killed the dinosaurs?
I was playing a silly asteroid game and had a question in my head: how fast would a mile long meteor have to go to match the impact of the Chicxulub impact? (The impact that killed the dinosaurs.)
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What if a magically indestructible human-sized rocky meteor hit the United States at 10% the speed of light? [closed]
Let's say that it hits in the exact center and is somehow also incompressible and doesn't slow down upon entering the atmosphere.
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Does Mars get hit by as many meteors as the Earth?
The Moon gets bombarded by meteors at the same rate as the Earth according to
What the moon's craters reveal about earth's history
Does Mars or any other planet get bombarded at the same rate as the ...
user48394
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How can I identify if my stone is meteorite?
I found 2 stones in my village. One of them is magnet attractive, well-shaped, no bubbles etc. I just want to clarify if it is meteorite, but in my country (Azerbaijan) there's not such a lab. Is it ...
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Trying to identify something I saw in the sky
I'm trying to identify something I saw in the sky. This occurred in central Virginia (Louisa county), US on Sunday at around 2:15 AM EST. It started as a ring of what looked like smoke, high in the ...
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is an asteroid impact the same as an atom bomb [closed]
Pretty much what it says on the tin. Would an asteroid like say, the one that killed the dinosaurs be like a massive atomic bomb? With the eyes melting, bodies burnt to a crisp, leaving only shadows ...
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What would happen if Venus was hit by a Chicxulub-like meteor?
What would happen if Venus was hit by a Chicxulub-like meteor? Would the dense atmosphere and high surface pressure and temperature lead to a different result compared to what happened here on Earth?
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The Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud [closed]
How come the comets and asteroids in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud are kept in a gravitational field and they don't get pushed and pulled by the planets around them? I get why comets in the Oort ...
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What percentage of meteors are visible to the naked eye?
I read on a box of Lucky Charms that there are nearly a million shooting stars every day. My initial reaction was, "that's obviously false." However, upon further research I discovered that &...
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Satellite?? Star?? I am puzzled over what I just saw
I was just outside between 6:10 - 6:12 a.m. this morning (Sep.11/2021) and between this time saw the strangest anomaly in the sky.
It was still completely dark outside, the stars were extremely clear ...
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Fixed star-like light appears for a second or two - is there a way to find out what it was?
I saw what I can only describe as a fixed point of light, as bright as a shooting star, near Alpheratz for a second or two before disappearing. I am positive it wasn't a satellite nor a plane. There ...
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What is a "rare earthgrazer" and why might I see one during the Perseids "earlier in the night" moving slow, across the horizon?
I clicked on a Yahoo News link How to watch the Perseids — the best meteor shower of the year and saw the following sentence:
The meteors are very fast and bright, regularly leaving long tails of ...
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Dotted line of moving objects observed on May 5th and May 12th [duplicate]
I saw a dotted line shooting star-like object May 5th and May 12th. It was longer than any meteor/shooting star tail or trail I've ever seen before. I mean longer in every way, the distance it ...
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How do they know the TNT equivalent of the meteor explosion over Vermont?
I've seen several reports of this meteor explosion, below are two.
Was there infrasound recordings of the pressure wave, or were weak, local seismic signals recorded, or it this just a ballpark ...
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Does a meteor's direction change between country or latitude?
So here is the question me and a friend of mine from Norway we saw a meteor but que said he saw it in the opposite direction as me and I was looking from spain, does that make any sense? Or we should ...
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Observed meteors on Venus?
In an article on Venus by JPL from 1996 I read
Due to the dense Venusian atmosphere, primary impact craters of less than a 3 kilometer (2 mile) diameter are nonexistent.
I am now wondering whether ...
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Meteor size and frequency distribution for Earth vs. moon or other planets?
I struggle to find an answer to the at-first-sight simple question if or how the size distribution and frequency distribution of incoming rocks hitting the ground or the atmosphere vary from Earth, to ...
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Do some shooting stars NOT travel in a straight line? [duplicate]
I saw what I assumed was a shooting star on December 21 (or 22) 2020 that moved in a straight line and then abruptly turned in an arc perpendicular to its original straight path. The brightness and ...
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Why black holes look black to us?
Why black holes look black to us?
The question might sound weird but my head stuck in it. As we know objects that fall into the black holes seem to remain unchanged in its event horizon due to the ...
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Any record of the Earth passing through the tail (not trail) of a comet?
Discussion below the Space SE question How hard is it to fly through the tail of a comet? Has it been done? has led me to ask if there is any record of the Earth passing through the tail of a comet.
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Have any meteoroids been detected before they reached the Earth's atmosphere?
Once a meteoroid starts burning up in the atmosphere, it becomes a visible meteor. Have any meteoroids been detected before they started to burn in the atmosphere? If yes, what is the ballpark ...
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How long between the moment a meteor is first visible and the moment a meteorite hits the ground?
A meteor is usually only visible for a couple seconds at most, but I would guess that it usually stops being visible high above the ground.
Meteors often don't make it to the ground as they completely ...
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Origins of meteorites?
I am aware that the vast majority of meteorites come from the asteroid belt (including 4 Vesta), with some from the Moon and Mars. Are there any other locations from which meteorites have originated (...
user23921
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Where is the Perseids meteor shower coming from?
Swift–Tuttle Comet has orbital period of 133.28 years. Yet, people say that debris and dust from this comet causes this meteor shower. This does not make any sense. Or do they want to say that from ...
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Strange trail left by shooting star [duplicate]
I saw something really odd last night that I cannot understand.
Last night I got up around 3am to catch a glimpse of the upcoming Perseids meteor shower, now I know it's not peaking until next week ...
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Is there an all sky meteor watch with spectroscopy?
I assume performing spectroscopy on meteors would give us information about the composition of the outer layers of meteoroids, which we can't study on finds because it has already burned up. This ...
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apparent and absolute magnitude of meteors and space debris
I have a question regarding the apparent and absolute magnitude of space debris objects or meteors reentering the earth's atmosphere. I already understand the difference between apparent and absolute ...
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What could be the name of a huge asteroid I watched some years ago?
Some years ago I was with my family in Venezuela. I'm not sure about the date/hour, but probably it was somewhat around 2007 in the afternoon. We were talking when one of us saw a huge meteor moving "...
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How complicated is the heating of meteors?
When any gas, including our atmosphere, is compressed, it's temperature rises.
When a meteor is falling through the atmosphere, it is compressing the air below it.
Because this makes the air hotter ...
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Why is this shooting star wavy or squiggly toward the end of it's visible streak
I was taking photos of some stars when I noticed this shooting star was wavy toward the end (start?) of it's trail. My cousin suggesting that it could be the CCD in my camera or as it spiralling as it ...
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Are meteors visible on Mars?
If a person were standing on the surface of Mars, under ideal viewing conditions for seeing a meteor: no clouds, the sun has long set, would a meteor be visible to the naked eye considering how thin ...
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What makes some meteor showers continue for days, while the "Unicorn shower" can be shorter than one hour?
The Washington Post's One hundred meteors in 15 minutes? ‘Short-lived outburst’ of shooting stars forecast for Thursday night. says:
A “short-lived outburst” is forecast for Thursday evening around ...
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Slow moving star like objects in the night sky [duplicate]
So yesterday at about 2am I was watching the sky when I saw a small star like object moving very slowly across the sky. My initial thought was that it was a satellite due to the fact it was moving so ...
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Why did this meteor appear cyan?
A meteor recently flashed over Queenland.
The meteor has been described by various people as appearing cyan or aqua, so the blueness of the image can't be due to a camera issue. The colour doesn't ...
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How was this interstellar fireball observed and its trajectory analyzed?
The short, interesting paper Discovery of a Meteor of Interstellar Origin describes a proposed discovery of a second interstellar object. This one hit the Earth, and was discovered not by telescope, ...
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Could the Sun have liquid iron in orbit?
How close of an orbit to the Sun could an iron meteor get before it melts into a ball?
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Could pure iron from a star make it to Earth?
Since iron is a stars waste could a star that goes Super nova eject pure iron to travel across the galaxy?
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/35101/99-99-pure-iron-meteorite
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Was NASA's 2007 attempt to see helions during a solar eclipse successful? What instruments were used?
This answer about Sun-grazing comets led me eventually to Wikipedia's Helion (meteoroid), which has a one-sentence long article:
A Helion meteoroid is a meteoroid that arrives from the approximate ...
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What percentage of a lunar meteor strike is blown back into space?
Reading a discussion on another website, it was proposed that if a large meteor struck the moon, that a few days later, Earth would receive a meteor shower.
I thought about that and it seemed to me ...
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Did I see a mentionable event in Germany early morning on 6th of February 2019?
Around 6.15am (GMT + 1) on the 6th of February 2019 I
was looking out of my window somewhat north, when I saw something one would probably call a shooting star. The features were:
A magnitude I ...
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Why do shooting stars burn close to the ground sometimes?
I saw a shooting star as I was standing on the roof of my home. My home is double storey. And the height of that shooting star that I saw was maybe 10 to 13 meters. It was burned down at that height. ...
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What would it take to capture a passing asteroid or other celestial body into Earth's orbit?
Every once in a while, we have a celestial body that passes through our solar system. What would be needed to reel one of these in? Not crashing down to Earth, that would be bad, but say into a high ...
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Will comet 21P that just passed Earth on Sept 10 produce Draconid storm on Oct 9?
Comet 21P/Giaccobini-Zinner just made its closest pass to Earth and also made its Solar perihelion on the same day (Sept 10) which is roughly one month ahead of the annual Draconids meteor shower (Oct ...
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