During the year, earth's orbit crosses the paths of hubris left behind by comets. When this debris enters the atmosphere it is heated by friction and it's temperature raises dramatically making them quite easy to spot, this are the so called shooting stars.
When the earth crosses a dense stream then the number of shooting stars (usually close to one per hour in the whole sky) meteor showers occur. Some well known meteor showers are the Perseids and the Leonids (usually boring, the Leonids can produce the most spectacular meteor showers evey 33 years including the meteor shower of 1833, usually considered the most spectacular ever).
Tomorrow's night (October 21-22) the Orionids will reach their peak, in the north you can expect 20 meteors per hour and 40 in the south.
Use this starmap (from meteorshowersonline) to watch the orionids, the stream of meteors will look as emerging from a radiant, the radiant is quite close to red bright star Betelgeuse.Remember that this means 20 meteors in the full sky, and to be honest this shower isn't as reliable as the Perseids, nonetheless it is a nice weekend activity.
The source of the Orionids stream is the famous Halley's comet, so you are actually watching little pieces from this comet as they enter the earth, quite amazing if you think about it, there are even missions where high altitude planes collect this comet dust.
The source of the Orionids stream is the famous Halley's comet, so you are actually watching little pieces from this comet as they enter the earth, quite amazing if you think about it, there are even missions where high altitude planes collect this comet dust.
3 comments:
:D Hola, me recuerdas, bien he venido a compartir contigo que hoy fui a la conferencia de Robert Laughlin, fue muy interesante e igual anduviste por ahí! hay unos detallitos muy sencillos en mi blog!
De hecho en Guadalajara nos enlazamos a la confrenecia de Laughlin. En el aspecto técnico tuvimos problemas, el audio era malo y el video se cortaba, sin embargo si pude ver la mayoría de la conferencia.
Espero que la entrada al respecto sea de tu agrado. Aparentemente el miercoles hubo otra conferencia de Laughlin ¿Podría alguien informarme que paso ahi?
Hola! De hecho es cierto que hubo dos conferencias de Robert Laughlin, yo solo pude ir a la segunda. Lo malo del asunto es que hubo problemas burocráticos y tan solo platico la mitad de su conferencia (la primera y menos interesante). En esa ocasión platico tambien de emergence, pero de una manera indirecta analizando un compuesto muy particular, que a ciertas presiones y temperaturas es superconductor, pero que a temperaturas mas altas muestra un comportamiento muy particular que segun el es emergente. Lamento no poder dar mas detalles pero estaba hasta atras en la conferencia y el solo pudo dar una parte no muy atractiva de su platica. Como no lo dejaron terminar adelanto todas sus diapositivas de golpe y la ultima decia "One of the most important problems of the XXI century" o "the most important..." no recuerdo...
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