What causes different colors in falling stars?

I was outside checkin' out the stars and the moon for about an hour, anyways within 10 mins of watching, I saw a really amazing orange colored falling star. It was beautiful, like as if the universe winked at me. In my life I've seen a Blue falling star and a Green falling star.

Just courious if anyone knew what made them that color like, certain make up ? or is it just random depending on tempature?



All I can say is I love seeing them, and wish I'd take more time out of my life to stop and just look up and appreciate the beauty of the heavens.

I always thought it was the elements contained in the meteor, but this site says it has to do more with the speed.

The best colored meteor I've seen was a very bright green one that broke into two pieces before going out. They are very beautiful, and rare enough to be appreciated.

The colors seem more related to the speed of the meteor rather than composition. Red meteors occasionally appear as very long streaks and are usually indicative of a meteor that is skimming the atmosphere. Green meteors are also occasionally seen and are usually very bright. The green color may be a result of ionized oxygen.

Originally posted by Lysergic....All I can say is I love seeing them, and wish I'd take more time out of my life to stop and just look up and appreciate the beauty of the heavens.

I would agree wholeheartedly with that statement: so many people tend to see things at eye level and rarely, it seems to me, raise their eyes skywards.

As a youngster in the 1950's, and living in a fairly rural area (without the horrendous light pollution we have today), it was simply the awesome beauty of seeing the "bowl" of the Heavens above me that gave rise to my life-long interest in Astronomy. When the skies were cloudless and the "seeing" was steady, the sheer number, colour and brightness of the stars seemed to me then to be countless.

As they say, Astronomy is looking up.....

Originally posted by eaglewingz
I always thought it was the elements contained in the meteor, but this site says it has to do more with the speed.

Well... higher speed could mean higher temperature but that's definitely only small part of problem.

Especially colourful meteors are mancaused with high propability... space junk like satellites and parts of launch vehicles produce lot of colors, which is just because great spectrum of different elements they contain.


Also some meteor showers have more colorful meteors than others.

Okay so I've seen Orange/Yellow, Green, and Blue, are Red and Purple possible colors?

During one of those yearly showers that occur during the winter, I had to go out around midnight for an armload of fire wood. I paused for several minutes in the cold .... and was wonderfully rewarded with a large, bright 'hot' pink streak which emitted a high pitched whistle before it burned up. The best one I've ever seen.

Velocity+material+atmospheric condition = color of metor trail

Smog and other pollutants that give us the wonderful sunsets on the west coast also are a factor with anything that lights up the night sky. So often times it is very difficult to determine the true nature of composition of a metor by just viewing the color of the tail.

Originally posted by robertfenix
Velocity+material+atmospheric condition = color of metor trail

Well, not quite.

Different colors are simply caused by Chromatic Abberation Caustics.(CAC) for short.



(I just made up the acronym)


It has to do with the fact that there is glass in the atmosphere dividing up the light into the spectrum.


[edit on 14-5-2005 by Plumbo]

Plumbo, you've got your thread, keep it there.

Red and purple should be possible, you just need the right combination of factors.

My best experience ever was on my 12th birthday (August 12th). I was at a fantastic camp, and we spent the entire night at a sister camp which mimicked Native American lifestyles, and that night was the naming ceremony. After games, dances, and a giant bonfire, we lay down in the field. After about 15 minutes, there was the worlds mst beautiful meteor shower. It was fantastic.

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
Plumbo, you've got your thread, keep it there.

It seems rather subjective and segregational to force an idea which permeates almost all topics of space exploration into a category dismissed as imaginative thought.

That is like saying to keep the idea of a Big Bang out of school textbooks and classify it in the fiction section of libraries.

I'm glad you visited my thread(s), sadly however I believe you, like most everyone else in this world will choose to believe a lie simply because truth is a notion we find very hard to accept. This is a condition of one's heart, not their mind and, consequently because their heart's refusal of the truth, their mind follows suit.

The visual proof of glass is as plain as anyone can see...chromatic abberation of a comet's tail, caustic anomolies of the auroras, the rainbow, the sundog, the fata morgana, superior mirage, etc. Even more fascinationg is that we can even feel the glass for ourselves by touching the fusion crust of a meterorite.

But alas, as they say, "ignorance is bliss" how true, how true indeed.
I thought the mantra around here was to deny ignorance. Maybe I was wrong.

there was the worlds mst beautiful meteor shower. It was fantastic.

And yet did you Amorymeltzer ever consider an alternate explanation as to what causes a meteor shower? Meteor fragments are very tiny, some not bigger than a grain of sand, and yet, even when they seem as vibrant as a star, we have the audacity to believe stars are thousands of times bigger than earth.

Meteor showers produce tektites. Do you know what tektites are Amorymeltzer?

Tektites are silicate-based material associated with meteorite impacts. Their origin is not completely certain.

www.roamingastronomer.com...

Tektites consist of silica-rich glass similar to our volcanic glass obsidian, and because of the similarity, there is doubt in a number of cases whether the glass is of terrestrial or of extraterrestrial origin.

www.infoplease.com...

So, now you know where they come from!!!

That's right, the meteor hits the glass atmosphere and shatters into tiny rocks while emitting glass fragments from the glass rim as well!

Now please do not try to deny ignorance by telling me to isolate my glass hyposthesis on my little own island of a thread on BTS.

Otherwise you would be embracing, not denying ignorance.


First Law of Thermodynamics:
This law suggests that energy can be transferred from one system to another in many forms. However, it can not be created nor destroyed. Thus, the total amount of energy available in the Universe is constant.

So either the tektites magically popped up out of nowhere, or there is glass in the sky.

You pick!

And no Virginia, there isn't a Santa Claus.....but God exists!!!

[edit on 16-5-2005 by Plumbo]

I was asking you to NOT turn this thread into another plug for your glass idea. I've no problem with it, but this is about meteors beign different colors. If you had posted the last third of your post to begin with, that would have been a different case.



Oh, and uh, don't lecture me on thermodynamics.

A ancient group of Tibetans and Buddhist monks, had a traditional practice which utilized a Phurba. Such an item was created from metoric iron and human bone (originals were), because that was the only material known, able to slay demons.

Below is a search link, go ahead and browse the list;
HISTORY OF

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
I was asking you to NOT turn this thread into another plug for your glass idea. I've no problem with it, ....

You have no problem with what? exactly?

[edit on 17-5-2005 by Plumbo]

The colors produced by meteors are a function of the specific elements contained in the object. As the meteor is heated by the friction of the atmosphere, those elements are burned producing colors. By using different elements in fireworks we get different colors in much the same way, which have caused ooooos and aahhhs for centuries.

www.pyroinnovations.com...
www.webelements.com...