green shooting stars

hey guys, i wasnt quite sure what forum to post this but this seemed like the closest subject i could think of.
ok well i live in phoenix az and i work at deer valley airport, which is a bigger general aviation airport. On some nights that i worked i have seen like these shooting stars that have a bright green trail behind them, but whats even more notaceable is that there not so far up in the sky, i have seen one that looked like it was only a 1000 feet up , others around 20 to 30. but then again i barely got a glimpse of it. THe other night i saw 2 of them in a row , in the same area within 20 seconds. They were north of the airport.
just as a note since deer valley is on the north edge of the city, anything north of it is just desert and privately owned property and land. That means less polution, and no lights. Some traffic for sky harbor international airport flys just to the east above the airport. thought maybe it could be some kind of dropping from a aircraft. but i doubt it is.
thx

How fast do they move?
I am guessing regular speed and pattern of a star? Does it just burn up like a star? Fade to black if you will?

there speed is as fast as a regular shooting star. i have not seen one above me like a regular shooting star. there always closer to the horizon, i would guess about 35-50 degree's relitive to you and the horizon. exept for 1 that was above me but it looked really close to the ground. its duration from what i have seen is less than one second, the material itself is bright white but then burns out to nothing, and leaves the green trail behind it just as long as the distance of the burning material traveled. the entire event is seen only like for a half a second maybe less.

Bright green meteors is not uncommon. One of the yearly meteor showers, not sure offhand whether its the leonids or persiads have mostly green. its the chemical composition of the meteor.

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*later edit
If you do a google search on green meteors you will see a few results and from there it looks like its the leonids that are mostly green.

spectacular, they are stunning.

comets.amsmeteors.org...
Green meteors are also occasionally seen and are usually very bright. The green color may be a result of ionized oxygen.

[edit on 7-11-2005 by Mayet]

Yes!
I work on an airfield in the evening time and have a very clear view of the sky.
I have seen a couple very brilliant, green shooting stars lately. They seem to last for a startling length of time. The first one I saw, I really thought it was a flare!
Anyway. I have witnessed them, too, and live in Alabama. I really doubt they are being dropped from any aircraft unidentified or not, as they are really cooking in speed.

really, i would love to see one for a long duration, that are really exciting to watch but they last for a split second, i almost garentee that alabama has way clearer air than phoenix. well thx for the info all...

well i believe that copper when heated gives off a green flame which may add to some weight to it just being a meteor...
so if they have green tails that is my thinking... the meteor burning up in the atmosphere with a copper composition will give off a green flare sort of appearance umm at a 1000 feet i am clueless though

I'm glad someone else got the chance to see the shooting stars. They are really impressive. the green steeak is very vivid and bright.

It was a nice night for star-gazing; Venus was very bright, next to the sliver of a moon, Mars was about 170 degrees over my left shoulder while facing the moon, and the shooting stars were 90 degrees to my left. Altogether, it was dazzling.

Most meterorites are composed of iron and just burn yellow-reddish. However there are ones that have other ingredients and can give off different colors as they burn. For example barium chloride is used in fireworks to give a green color. Atmospheric conditions can help change the color also. A meteor on the horizon will have the same sunset filters as the sun when its going down compared to one high up in the sky.

I saw one last Feb. just out side Garden City,KS. It was right in my windshield and I also thought it was a flare. Then it blew up in a shower of sparks. Very nice.

Roper

Yeah, just to confirm it being a regular shooting star, different materials burn in different colors, depending on it's chemical composition.

thats good information, i was trying to look back on my chemistry notes to find out what chemical burned green and it in fact was copper. but there are also other chemicals,and elements that burn green to, thx all for the helpful info.

I saw two about 3 1/2 years ago, over the summer in mexico. the ones i saw did not go as fast as a shooting star, and the chem trail lasted a good 5 min. they are so eyedrawing, being so brightly green.

---Pineapple

Yeh i saw one last summer whilst star gazing with a friend on a warm night, it left a huge "Scar" in the sky for at least 5 seconds after it had burnt up.

Hey yea I saw one last night over the ocean and it is not like a shooting star it looks like it is right there in front of you. It is really cool to watch. It burns out but it takes a lot longer than normal

ive heard of these before, never seen one mind you, but i can imagine its a pretty cool thing to see, i managed to catch last years meteor shower and that was pretty amazing, dont normally see things like that in england

Originally posted by SabreOne
i would love to see one for a long duration, that are really exciting to watch but they last for a split second

Spend enough time looking and you will eventually see some long ones.

Also, you can increase your chances of seeing longer meteors by observing on a meteor shower peak night when the shower radiant is located on or within a few degrees above or below the horizon. In other words, start observing early, when the shower is just starting for the night.

If you do this at the right time, you may just get lucky and see a few of what are called "earth grazers", which are meteors that just skim the upper atmosphere, hence the name. Because they come in at shallow angles, earth grazers encounter less dence air, so they tend to last longer and travel much further through our atmosphere. Not only that, but due to perspective, earth grazing meteors also appear to have longer trails.

To understand why this is, you have to understand a few basic things about meteor showers and shower radiants...

Firstly, when a meteoroid leaves it's parent body (comet), it travels in parallel with it's brothers and sisters. Because of this, all meteors that belong to a specific meteor shower will appear to diverge from an imaginary point in the sky called the radiant, which usually lies close to or in the constellation after which the shower gets its name.

Tracing back the trail from the end point of the meteor trail, through and past the start point, you get a line pointing back to the radiant, just as you would looking along a long straight section of railroad track, and just like the parallel meteors, the two tracks converge in the distance to a point much like the radiant.

This short animation shows how Earth interacts with the Leonid meteors as an example.

So when you observe with the radiant near the horizon, the number of meteors you see from that shower will probably be low, but if you do see only one or two it's well worth the time and effort as they can be very spectacular and long, often shooting upwards and away from the horizon, although they can also be seen to travel close to the horizon, hugging it in a parallel fashion if you are lucky and have nice clear horizons.

Each particular shower has its own radiant and its own window when you can see earth grazers, and the latter depends a great deal on you location. Even so, if you want to find out what time you should look during a particular shower night to see earth grazers, then all you need to do is is download some planetarium software like "SkyMap/SkyMap Pro" etc and see when the constellation your radiant is in is just below the horizon (10-15 degrees below is roughly when you start to see them I think). After the radiant rises higher than about the same amount above the horizon as it was below at the start, meteors get more numerous, but also appear shorter due to the changing perspective.

Originally posted by spookymulder
dont normally see things like that in england

Actually, we do, or at least those of us that look do

In all fairness though, you do need to be a bit more patient here due to the weather, but it's just a question of "planning to observe for 3 nights in a row, and ending up with perhaps one cloud free night if you're lucky" usually.

Location and technique also play a part. It looks like you are all set with your location... just drive 40-50 miles West to Bodmin Moor. I might even run into you at some point if you go there If you need tips on technique, U2U me and I'll point you in the right direction

Originally posted by spookymulder
ive heard of these before, never seen one mind you, but i can imagine its a pretty cool thing to see

Green meteors? Yeah they are cool, but very easy to see if you know when to look... blue, red and golden meteors are less common. I think all colors are cool

What most people don't realize is that more often that not, and providing the meteor has enough mass to burn for long enough, a green meteor will go from green (more oxygen present) to being yellow, then orange/red (more nitrogen present) as it moves lower into the atmosphere.

Luckily our eyes have most of their sensitivity in the green wavelengths of light, so we usually have no trouble picking up a meteor during the green phase when it's at it's dimmest in terms of total light output. Unfortunately this is not true of cameras, which usually need a fast lens + high ISO to capture much of the green. Here are a couple of examples I found:



link


Whilst this is by no means typical behaviour for every meteor/shower, the meteors of both the Perseids (Aug 12-13 peak) and the Leonids (Nov 16-18 peak) are well known for this.

Originally posted by spookymulder
i managed to catch last years meteor shower and that was pretty amazing

Which one? There are around 70 known meteor showers. Try this calender if you're not sure.


[edit on 18-6-2008 by C.H.U.D.]

[edit on 18-6-2008 by C.H.U.D.]

[edit on 18-6-2008 by C.H.U.D.]

Originally posted by fanthorpe
Yeh i saw one last summer whilst star gazing with a friend on a warm night, it left a huge "Scar" in the sky for at least 5 seconds after it had burnt up.

Great when they do that isn't it ?

What you saw was something we in the trade call a persistent train.

The Perseids and Leonids are well known for producing spectacular persistent trains! I've seen a few Leonids that have left trains for 5+ minutes under very dark skies. Some extremely bright fireballs have been known to produce trains that last many tens of minutes

Persistent trains are actually self-luminous (ie not sun-lit), and although we know that they are due to molecules being excited/ionized by the passage of the meteor through the atmosphere, no one has been able to figure out how they can last for so long.

I saw one of these over the Bay of Fundy in Saint John, NB, Canada early this morning shortly before 2:00am. Had no idea what it was, it just exploded out of the sky downwards and was very green.

Have seen (and heard!) a huge piece of space junk explode upon re-entering the atmosphere at about 75 degrees towards east zenith relative to where I was standing.

It was travelling slowly compared to a meteor, for example, and took a long spectacular time burning, as the components of the spacecraft striking the upper atmosphere were fused into a molten ball of heterogeneous plasma. Now, this plasmic ball then exploded (once it reached the depth of the atmosphere where air pressure was high enough it was like tipping water in to molten steel in reverse i – you get a big explosion). The explosion looked something like this:




What I think happened was that the atmosphere acted as a kind of giant gas/plasma chromatographic separation phase, with the molten components of the spacecraft emitting differing wavelengths of light proportionate to the amount of heat energy required for them to combust (based on their chemical composition.

The explosion – as I perceived it - was in three distinct parts. At the end of the white streak there was a flash followed by the above spectrographic emission of visible light. There was the sound wave. And then there was the pressure wave/shock wave.



You might thnik that the sound wave and the pressure wave would be the same, or contiguous with each other, but not so, they were very distinct and separate, one after the other.

o crap - there goes my ride!

[edit on 31-7-2008 by undermind]