meteors

Perseid Meteor Shower 2009: Don’t Miss Tonight’s Show

With up to 100 shooting stars an hour, the celestial light show peaks tonight.

Perseids:  [Fred Bruenjes]
As tonight bleeds into tomorrow morning, the earth will be hurtling through a long skein of dust and rocks. Lucky for us, the result of our bombardment will not be annihilation, but rather one of the richest natural light shows of the year—the Perseid meteor shower. Here's how to watch.

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The Breakdown

Make A Wish

Popular Science looks at the science of shooting stars

In the first video we see footage of a fireball generated by a large meteor recently sighted careening over the skies of western Canada. Impressively bright! Since we get only a brief glimpse of the action we've also included another amazing video, below, of a meteor streaking over Guadalajara. It's a common misconception that the heat generated from meteors impacting the atmosphere is due to friction. In fact it's due to a thermodynamic process known as adiabatic compression. Let's see how this works.

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