Posted on 10/20/2006 3:05:30 PM PDT by blam
Hey, it's 7:30! Where was my crank call, ya slacker?
Oh heck, I got to drankin last night and forgot about it...worked 12 hours in "pain" today. 'sides, it was cloudy this mornin anyhow!
Well, today's not much better, that's fer sure. Hope you get some rest today.
their paths trace back to a spot in the constellation Orionfrom 2001's Orionid news:
Swordmaker, Halley's Comet mentioned.Halley's Comet Returns ... in Bits and Pieces"It's the annual Orionid meteor shower," explains Bill Cooke, a member of the Space Environments team at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). "Every year in October Earth passes through a stream of dusty debris shed long ago by Halley's comet." When bits of comet dust -- most no larger than grains of sand -- strike Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate, they become "shooting stars.".. The Orionids -- so named because they appear to streak out of a point (called the radiant) in the constellation Orion -- will peak on Sunday morning, October 21st... The October Orionids are cousins of the eta Aquarids -- a mostly southern hemisphere meteor shower in May. Both spring from Halley's comet. "Earth comes close to the orbit of Halley's comet twice a year, once in May and again in October," explains Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although the comet itself is rarely nearby -- it's beyond the orbit of Saturn now -- Halley's dusty debris constantly moves through the inner solar system and causes the two regular meteor showers. In 1986, the last time Comet Halley swung past the Sun, solar heating evaporated about 6 meters of dust-laden ice from the comet's nucleus. That's typical, say researchers. The comet has been visiting the inner solar system every 76 years for millennia, shedding dust each time... "The orbital evolution of Halley's dust is a very complicated problem," notes Cooke. No one knows exactly how long it takes for a dust-sized piece of Halley to move to an Earth-crossing orbit -- perhaps centuries or even thousands of years. However, one thing is certain: "Orionid meteoroids are old."
NASA
Oct. 17, 2001
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