Don’t Miss: Perseid Meteor Shower Spectacle Lights Up the Night Sky
The 2024 Perseids meteor shower, peaking on the night of August 11, promises an impressive display, though visibility may be slightly hindered by a waxing…
Meteors are the visible streaks of light in the sky, often referred to as “shooting stars” or “falling stars,” produced when meteoroids—small pieces of interplanetary debris—enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up due to frictional heating. Meteoroids themselves are typically composed of rock, metal, or a combination of both, and originate from comets or asteroids. As a meteoroid enters the atmosphere at high speeds, the intense heat caused by air friction vaporizes most of the material, creating a bright trail that can be seen from the ground. Most meteors disintegrate completely in the atmosphere; however, any remaining fragments that reach the Earth’s surface are called meteorites. Meteors can occur randomly or during predictable annual meteor showers, where the Earth passes through dense regions of space debris left by comets. These events are spectacular to observe and attract both amateur stargazers and professional astronomers.
The 2024 Perseids meteor shower, peaking on the night of August 11, promises an impressive display, though visibility may be slightly hindered by a waxing…
ESA’s fireball camera in Cáceres, Spain, captured a stunning meteor during the night of May 18-19, 2024, at 00:46 CEST on May 19 (22:46 UTC…
A meteor that lit up the skies over Spain and Portugal was captured by the Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite and a ground-based camera in…
What are some skywatching highlights in May 2024? Mars and Saturn tussle with the Moon, Mercury makes a brief a.m. appearance, East Coasters can see…
From the vast expanse of interstellar space to the minute realm of atoms: researchers harness advanced microscopes to uncover the chemical and molecular fingerprints of…
Sound waves thought to be from a 2014 meteor fireball north of Papua New Guinea were almost certainly vibrations from a truck rumbling along a…
Jenniskens’ collaborators at the Museum für Naturkunde officially announced that the first examinations of one of these pieces with an electron beam microprobe prove the…
The Geminid meteor shower is active for much of December, but the peak occurs from the night of the 13th into the morning of the…
What are some skywatching highlights in November 2023? The Leonid meteors peak, Saturn sits in the celestial sea, and Venus and Jupiter are visible on…
Recognized as one of the best meteor showers, the Perseids are especially notable this year due to a waning crescent moon, enhancing visibility. The NASA…
It’s August, and that heralds one of the year’s most beloved celestial events. The Perseid meteor shower will grace the skies, peaking this weekend on…
Chemical reactions driven by iron-laden particles from meteorites or volcanic outbursts might have led to the formation of molecules needed for the origin of life…
Princeton researchers used data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to deduce that a catastrophic event likely created the prolific Geminids meteoroid stream. Unlike most meteor…
Each winter, the Geminid meteors light up the sky as they race past Earth, producing one of the most intense meteor showers in the night…
The eta Aquariid meteor shower, peaking on the morning of May 5, promises an outburst year with up to 160 meteors per hour. Despite the…
The Lyrid meteor shower peaks on April 23 with up to 15 meteors per hour. The shower is one of the oldest in history, with…
On February 15, 2013, the people of Chelyabinsk, Russia, experienced a shocking event, and yet it was a small fraction of the devastation an asteroid…
Seventh Shooting Star Ever Spotted Before Impact For the seventh time, a small asteroid – a meteoroid as astronomers call it – was discovered in…