Have you ever seen a space visitor?! Today we are going to learn more a visitor from the space that is not a person but a rock! Let’s discover five memorable facts about Meteors.
A meteoroid is essentially a space rock that can vary in size and shape. When meteoroids enter the Earth’s atmosphere they become known as meteors.
When this occurs what we can see in the sky is a meteor streak, which is essentially a streak of light in the sky. When a meteoroid goes through the Earth’s atmosphere and hits the ground it is known as a meteorite.
A meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through the trail of debris left by a broken comet or asteroid.
Meteor showers occur a couple of times a year and they are usually named after a constellation or star that is close to where the meteor shower appears in the sky. Two of the meteor showers that occur each year are the Perseids in August and the Geminids in December.
Every Perseid meteor comes from a piece of the comet Swift-Tuttle and it is named after the constellation Perseus. It is one of the most impressive meteor showers of the year. The Geminids originate from the 3200 Phaethon asteroid and are bright and fast meteors.
When you make a wish on a shooting star it is technically a meteor that you are wishing on. Meteors are also known as fireballs, which are larger explosions of light and colour that can usually last longer than an average meteor streak. A fireball is brighter than the planet Venus and can have a magnitude of -3.
Meteors are usually small in size and some are even dust particles by the time they reach the ground.
The biggest meteor on earth is the Hoba meteorite which was found in 1920 by a farmer in Namibia. The Hoba meteorite is nine-foot in length and three-feet in height and it has a flat top.
The meteorite was given the name “Hoba” because it was discovered on a farm named “Hoba West.” The Hoba meteorite weighs over 60 tons, which is equivalent to the weight of 9 elephants. Themeteorite still remains in its original spot today.
The Barringer meteor crater was formed during the Ice Age and it is 1 km wide, which is as tall as three Eiffel Towers stacked on top of one another.
The crater formed was 750 feet deep. You could fit two and half Big Bens inside the Barringer Meteor. You can visit the Barringer meteor crater site in Northern Arizona.
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about meteors as much as we loved teaching you about them. Now that you know how majestic these stars are, you can move on to learn about our Solar System planets like: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Solar System, Space, Milky Way, Stars, Sunspots, Asteroids and Black Holes.
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