Why and how do meteor showers occur?
When it comes to Solar System, in addition to the planets, there are other objects orbiting the sun.
Planets revolve around the sun in their respective circular orbits.
Meteoroids orbit the sun in a lopsided manner. A meteoroid is a space rock. It is a small, broken away piece from a comet or an asteroid. The size of a meteoroid can be from 0.1 millimeter to 100 meters.
A meteoroid that enters the earth’s atmosphere is called meteor. The light we see is the resistance (or drag) of the air on the meteor. It makes the meteor extremely hot.
This also happens to the rocket ships when they enter the atmosphere. When multiple meteors enter the atmosphere and burn up, it is called a meteor shower.
The sun is a big ball of heat. When a meteoroid gets closer to the sun, the ice on the meteoroid boils, which releases a lot of debris (particles of dust and rock). Meteoroids are very small and usually get burned up once they have entered Earth’s atmosphere, so they won’t come and hit the earth’s surface.
When you are watching a meteor shower, you may also notice the “tail” of the meteors seem to be pointing in the same place. This is visible in that manner because the meteors are all coming from the same angle.
Meteor showers also come around the same time every year because they are in an orbit (just like the earth) around the sun.
If you want to know when the next one is so you can watch, you can look it up online at the calendar maintained by the American Meteor Society: https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteorshowers/meteor-shower-calendar/
NASA also posts information about it on its website.
Vaageesha Das is in ninth grade at Morgantown High School. Today’s information comes from: https://www.sc ientificamerican.com/article/what-cau ses-a-meteor-show/; https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/meteor-shower/en/; https://www.quora.com/Why-do-meteor-showers-occur.
