Astronomy Tuesday

I don't usually include images taken from down here on Earth in this series, but I couldn't resist this one: a composite image of the Geminid meteor shower on December 14 of last year.

The meteors appear to be coming from the constellation Gemini (those two stars in the center of the meteor burst); you can also see Orion in the top left corner. But mostly it's the meteors, and this picture makes me smile.

Image Credit and Copyright: Wang Jin

Astronomy Tuesday

That fireball slicing through this photograph is a meteor. The photographer was trying to capture the Orion nebula, seen in the upper left, and the long exposure happened to capture this meteor as well. The orangey zigzag is what's known as a persistent train -- atoms in the Earth's atmosphere reacting to having electrons knocked away by the meteor. It's shaped that way because the wind actually blew it around during the long exposure. (You can see a gif of it here.)

The large star on the right is Rigel, the blue giant on the hunter's knee.

Image Credit and Copyright: Ivo Scheggia