Meteor Showers

[Craig Good]

http://www.ianww.com/meteor-showers/

Jonathan Knowles posted this on Facebook:

My friend and colleague Peter Jenniskens is an interstellar and interplanetary scientist at the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute. He also works on mission projects at NASA Ames Research Center. Peter is one of the world's experts on comets, asteroids and meteor showers (He has also done groundbreaking work at the Space Science Electron Microscopy Lab which led to the discovery of unusual forms of water ice that has played an important role in astrophysics).

 

So...check this out! He just published this today. He and his team have created a visualization (based on trajectory observations) of the bits left behind by comets that we eventually see as meteors streaking across the sky. This data is useful as we seek to better understand the risks of impacts.

 

Use your mouse/trackpad to change viewing perspective and zoom. You can easily select the shower you are interested in and change the speed of the planetary orbits. Be sure to click on "View from Earth." Check out the Quadrantids which are currently active for northern hemisphere observers. Zoom all the way out and watch the Perseids . Try the settings "Everything at once" and "View from Earth" st the same time. And this is not nearly "everything." There is still data to input and MUCH more in the way of data collection.

 

You will enjoy this! Please share with your spacey friends.

[Brian Howell]

Beautiful and informative. 

What was most interesting to me is how several of the showers have orbits that lie out of the plane of the ecliptic. I guess that's a result of the orbits/trajectories of their parent meteors as they were pulled in from the Oort Cloud.

Thanks for sharing, Craig

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Brian Howell
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