photos of the geminid and perseid meteor shower by (click pic) jeff dai, jeffrey sullivan, michael menefee, jia hao, kenneth brandon, rick whitacre and andrew curtis.
meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors seems to radiate, meaning that if one were to draw the tracks off all the meteors backwards, they would cross at a point in that constellation.
the perseid meteor shower, which peaks around mid august, occurs when the earth passes through the rubble trail left behind by comet 109p/swift-tuttle. the comet has an orbital period of about 120 years, but its debris is spread out fairly evenly along it orbital path, making the perseids a relatively reliable shower.
worth noting, the term meteoroid is used when the object is passing in space, meteor while plunging through our atmosphere, and meteorite if it survives the fall and lands on our planet without vaporizing.
the glow of the meteor comes from atmospheric friction, which heats them up when about fifty miles above the earth’s surface, and slows them down from an initial velocity of about 24,000 mph to a terminal velocity of only 300 mph.
the earth collects hundreds of tons of meteoric material every day, most of it in the form of dust grain sized particles wafting down to the surface without anyone noticing. in fact, swipe your finger across a dusty surface and you’ll be picking up space debris.
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