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Aug 17, 2018
Perseid Fireball and Persistent Train
Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Perseid Fireball and Persistent Train
Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Before local
midnight on August 12, this brilliant Perseid meteor
flashed above the Poloniny Dark Sky Park, Slovakia, planet Earth.
Streaking
beside the summer Milky Way, its initial color is likely due
to the shower meteor's characteristically high speed.
Moving at about 60 kilometers per second, Perseid meteors can
excite green emission from oxygen atoms while passing through the
thin atmosphere at high altitudes.
Also characteristic of bright meteors, this Perseid left a
lingering visible trail known as a
persistent train, wafting in the upper
atmosphere.
Its development is followed in the inset frames, exposures separated
by one minute and shown at the scale of the original image.
Compared to the brief flash of the meteor, the wraith-like trail really
is persistent.
After an hour faint remnants of this one could still be traced, expanding
to over 80 degrees on the sky.
