Saturday, December 5, 2009

Meteor - General information

Just want to share with this YouTube video.
The video was captured in south Africa on 21st November 2009.




As you can see how bright light can be produced by the very fast moving meteor rock which enter the Earth's Atmosphere.




For your information, if the speed of the meteor is lower than 11km per second  the meteor will not only enter our Earth's atmosphere but will hit the earth surface too. (Please refer to the left hand side formula - Escape speed of particle from Earth) For a particle to escape from Earth gravity attraction, the minimum speed the particle must have is 11km per second no matter what mass the particle has otherwise the gravity from earth will trying to pull the particle towards the Centre of Earth. (same principal with the rocket fired from Earth - 11km per second needs to be achieved by the rocket to resist the Earth's gravity force of attraction) resulting the particle ( in this case meteor to deflect towards the Earth)

* 11km per second mentioned is the speed of particle. Since Earth is also revolve is ellipse, we need to consider the speed of meteor with respect to the Earth velocity as well, either the particle (in this case meteor) is moving towards or away from the Earth velocity in the ellipse direction around the Sun ( it could be either 11 + 30 or 11-30, depending on the direction of meteor's velocity).

** 30 km per second is the speed of Earth revolve in ellipse and sun become one of the center of rotation of the Earth.


In the above video, we don't know either the meteor is just passing through the Earth Atmosphere or will also hit the earth surface.


Maybe you are wondering why a bright light is produced when the meteor enters the Earths atmosphere. As we know Earth's atmosphere is made up of Nitrogen and Oxygen, we might think the friction of the Meteor with the air cause the meteor to get burned... However this is not true and wrongly thought by a lots of people, the reason why light is produced is because of the fast moving meteor will cause the air in front of the meteor to get compressed and heated up, resulting the Meteor to get burned. That is also the reason why you do not see burning meteor in space as their is no air present in space hence no air compression can occurs and no light will be produced by the moving meteor.

gif photo source : http://space.com/media/h_in_refmeteors_entry_02d.gif

References & Further reading :

1) http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2109
2) http://www.meteorobs.org/maillist/msg13492.html
3) http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/meteors-ez.html
i) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity

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