green shooting stars, page 1

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.]