Page 22 - Astronomy Book 1

Frequent Visitors Meteorite Showers and Comets

Meteorite showers occur when the
earth passes through a trail of dust
usually left when a comet has
disitergrated. Each spec o f d u s t
burns up in the Earths atmosphere
creating a streak of light accross the

sky .

As the mass of dust is still orbiting
the Sun the earth passes through the
orbiting stream at regular yearly
intervals. Since the density of the

orbiting dust cloud varies not every
sweep through results in the same
intensity of meteorites. .

One good consistant shower is the
Percieds which occurs around the
10th of August. .

Comets are agglomerates of rock
and water that orbit the Sun some
taking a few tens of years to orbit
some several hundred.

As they approach the Sun they
warm and tend to disintergrate

slightly creating the characteristic
“tail”. One recent comet that was
easily viewable from the UK was
Comet Lovejoy which was close
in 2015. It will next return in about
680 years.

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