Sunday, October 21, 2012

Wavy Perseid trail


Meteors are the blazing trails that smaller than one would expect dust leave while entering our atmosphere at huge velocities (from about 20 to 70 kilometers per second). A millimeter sized particle would produce a very bright meteor, probably not unlike the -8m one that left the trail pictured below. Sometimes these ionized gases remain visible for so long that high atmosphere winds distort them in funny ways:

The picture was taken in August 2008 during the maximum of the Perseid meteor shower from the top of the Omu Peak in the Romanian Carpathians.

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