Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Perseid Below

NASA ^ | August 10, 2012 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Denizens of planet Earth watched last year's Perseid meteor shower by looking up into the bright moonlit night sky. But this remarkable view captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan looks down on a Perseid meteor. From Garan's perspective onboard the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid meteors streak below, swept up dust left from comet Swift-Tuttle heated to incandescence. The glowing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60 kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash is right of frame center, below the curving limb of the Earth and a layer of greenish airglow, just below bright star Arcturus. Want to look up at this year's Perseid meteor shower? You're in luck. This weekend the shower should be near its peak, with less interference from a waning crescent Moon rising a few hours before the Sun.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: Ron Garan, ISS Expedition 28 Crew, NASA]

[SunkenCiv]

• [snip] In contrast, the rationalist Greek thinker Aristotle asserted that it was patently impossible for stones to fall from the sky, as there was no matter up there to fall, apart from the celestial bodies themselves. Instead, he proposed a type of solution which will be familiar to modern rationalist sceptics: meteors are the tops of volcanoes which have broken off, and are being carried to earth by the force of some distant explosion. This explanation was largely rejected at the time but came to be increasingly widely accepted as the cosmos envisaged by Ptolemy, a universe of interlocking spheres, became the orthodoxy. Obviously nothing could fall between one sphere and another, and so 'meteors' (a term which included the Northern Lights, will-o'-the- wisps and various other phenomena) were classed as atmospheric in origin. [/snip] -- Cosmic Debris | Fortean Times UK
• [snip] 'Logic' proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow. [/snip] -- Robert Heinlein | Glory Road (1963)
• [snip] Gentlemen, I would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie than believe that stones fall from heaven. [/snip] -- Thomas Jefferson

Logic, like belief, is merely something people use to reject things they don't want to believe.

New Curiosity Images: Including a color Gale Crater vista

join or quit list APoD 'blog post new APoD topic Astronomy Picture of the Day topic & keyword Astronomy Chat, Bloggers & keyword Science Chat, Bloggers & keyword NASA's APoD archive Calendar 1995-present APoD on your desktop

[penelopesire]

This weekend is the peak time to watch the Perseid meteor shower! It is suppose to be a great snow this year with anywhere from 60 to 100 per hour and little moon interference.