What a Falling Star looks like..... From Space!

[Donnachaidh]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/15/what-a-falling-star-looks-like-from-space/



He took this shot (according to the header info in the picture) on August 13 at 7:17 p.m. UT, when the ISS was above the Mongolia/China border. This was during the annual Perseid meteor shower, but that doesn’t guarantee this meteor Ron saw was a Perseid. It probably was, though. For an observer on Earth, the Perseids rain down at a rate of about 60 per hour or so. You can usually see about 5 meteors per hour that are just random bits of cosmic detritus. So only 1 meteor in 12 is not a real Perseid, making it likely this one was.

But that got me thinking…

Meteors burn up roughly 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the Earth’s surface. To make the math simpler, let’s say they burn up at exactly that height, so that any meteor coming in hits this barrier and evaporates. You can picture it as a thin shell of air surrounding the Earth 100 km high, like a force field, or better yet as an umbrella that rain hits (it’s a meteor shower, after all, ha!) and stops cold.

When you look straight up, that barrier is 100 km directly above your head. When you look to the horizon, that distance is actually a little over 1000 km away, because the atmosphere follows the curve of the Earth (you can get an idea of this in the diagram above). The top of this umbrella is then 100 km up and over 1000 km to the sides.

More at the link --

[Renew Deal]

1. What happens if that hits the ISS?

:shrug:

[hobbit709]

3. Extremely bad news.

[Warpy]

5. That's one of the problems they should have been working on

before they put that thing up there. However, the ISS is compartmentalized, and if it gets nailed, that compartment will seal off from the rest of the station, sucks to be anybody in the compartment that got hit.

[deaniac21]

2. Closeup

[City Lights]

4. That is a great pic!

Rec'd.

[William769]

6. And I thought it looked like this.