DEC 2010
All day I had looked forward to Meteor watch. At 22.00
we walked to the Clydebank High park . It was a cold December night. Glasgow had freezing fog and Dumbarton had clouded over but where we were there was a break in the clouds. We climbed to the top of the hill stared up to the nightsky. It takes a while for your eyes to adjust.
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We has seen one of our friends in his car while on the street lucky he didn`t stop asks us why we were out so late. He would have thought we were off our heads.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------After a few minutes you start wondering if you are seeing things or is it Easyjet crossing the sky.
Then from east to west in the northern skies a white light
streaks a across the sky . If you had blinked you would have missed it . Then another spear of light different part of the sky. Our eyes have adjust to the dark sky and you can see thousands of stars. The plough is so easy to spot.
Then comes the highlight of the night a shooting star right above from left to right that brought cries of WOW .
In total we seen 8 meteors in 30mins not bad .
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This short movie gives you an idea what to look for.
Meteors are usually dust or sand grain sized pieces of rock which speed through space up to tens or hundreds of kilometers a second and when they enter the Earths atmosphere they burn up, creating bright or brilliant streaks across the sky.
Often referred to as "Shooting Stars" they can be seen randomly on most clear evenings and can be few or far between, these are called "Sporadic Meteors". A sporadic meteor can appear anywhere in the sky and from any direction.
You may be lucky enough and by chance to see larger sized pieces of debris burn up in the atmosphere causing very bright and enduring meteors, often referred to as "Fire Balls" or "Bolides". These are quite a sight and can last for several seconds in some cases.
Several times a year and on specific dates we have "Meteor Showers". A meteor shower is usually the left over debris from the tail of a comet which has in the past, passed through the Earths orbit or orbital plane around the sun. Because we know where and when these encounters happened we can accurately predict when the Earth will pass through the debris trail.
Some meteor showers only produce a hand full of meteors per hour and some produce up to a hundred or more meteors per hour. This is known as a "Zenithal Hourly Rate" or ZHR. We can also predict where in the sky or from what direction the meteor shower will come from, this is called the "Radiant".
A meteor shower will get its name from the constellation of stars the radiant occurs in, e.g. Perseids (Perseus), Leonids (Leo) and Geminids (Gemini) etc. A meteor is not to be confused with a "Meteorite" which is a meteor which has struck the surface of the planet, often very small pebble or stone sized.
Meteorites in extreme cases can be large, anything from the size of a football to many hundreds of Meters or Kilometers across. The Meteorite suspected of wiping out the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago, is estimated to have been 6 kilometers in diameter
June2011 Below The international station seen from Clydebank