At the end of almost every summer, you can enjoy an unusually beautiful sight - an abundant starfall, when the sky is lit up at night with luminous paths. Sometimes these are solitary “traces”, sometimes it is real rain of fire. In especially “fruitful” years, many people specially go out for night walks to enjoy this spectacle. Lovers kiss in the light of a shooting star. Romantics quietly die from the sight of the colored sky, poets write poems. And what are the different names for shooting stars?
Superstitions and legends
The most famous and used sign: seeing a shooting star, you need to make a wish. I managed it before it went out - the wish will come true. If you don’t have time, either you don’t need it, or you don’t really want it.
A much less well-known myth, to which religious people are more inclined: a shooting star is an angel that brings soul to a newborn.
The ancient Greeks believed that a shooting star is a divine spear or arrow directed against the forces of evil. For the Slavs, she personified death, for the Scandinavians - the soul that people and gods have forgiven, for Muslims - a strong and evil enemy.
Scientific explanation
Meanwhile, even high school students have long known that a star cannot fall. It is a huge ball of gas of inconceivable temperature. And if at least one such star crashes to the Earth, the last will probably not be left with dust. So what are scientists calling shooting stars?
In fact, a colorful trace in the sky is left by a stone that has entered the uppermost layers of the earth's atmosphere. From friction against the air, it heats and begins to glow. Here is how. Falling stars are called “meteors” in a different way if they are small in size and burn completely at a distance of eight to ten dozen kilometers, even in the atmosphere. Some meteors are so small that without binoculars, or even a telescope, their path is impossible to see.
What are the names of shooting stars, whose “fragments” reach the soil? These are meteorites. They are large in size, and most of them fly into the atmosphere relatively slowly, which allows air to slow them down. The meteorite looks like a ball of fire, which rumbles and roars through the sky, and after a fall leaves a crater on the surface. I must say that “stones” of this size, and even flying into the Earth’s shell at the right angle and at the appropriate speed, are quite rare, so the fall of each of them is imprinted in human memory for a long time (the same Tunguska or the one that fell in Africa).
Sources of shooting stars
Individual meteorites occur at any time of the year. This is due to the fact that some random cosmic body was captured by the magnetic field of our (and any other) planet. Another thing is massive meteor attacks (as shooting stars are called in a different way, we already found out).
Astronomers have accurately determined that rains from shooting stars only generate comets. This cosmic phenomenon itself lies in a solid (usually icy, but there are also stone variations; although even comets made of ice contain solid inclusions). When the comet approaches the star, the temperature of which goes off scale, the ice evaporates, taking with it the solid components of the nucleus. The tail is made up of microscopic dust particles carried away by what is called the "solar wind." Larger (and, accordingly, heavy) pebbles are not capable of the wind. As a result, they create a donut around the celestial body , called by the astronomers "torus". And if the specified donut falls into the field of gravity of the planet, we have star rain.
Starfall as a phenomenon
There are two noteworthy meteor showers. One of them is called Leonids, the other - Perseids, by the name of stellar systems from which they emanate optically. The first of them please the waterfalls of stars after many years, but the second - every summer. This is because the stream of celestial bodies with which the Earth collides also has its own age. If he is “young”, the starfall will be plentiful, if he has already repeatedly met with our planet (and maybe with others on his way), then his “stone warriors” have already thinned out pretty much.
Why august?
What is most interesting, the August "star rains" regularly go from year to year. Astronomers agree on why the stars fall in August, and not in another month. They believe that the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet through which the Earth passes at this time is the culprit. What exactly is this starfall good for? Because it is accessible to anyone, no special equipment is needed, and it does not matter where you are on the planet. It can be seen well, and it pleases ordinary people, and not just astronomers.
Of course, there are more spectacular rains from the stars. For example, the same Perseids promise just a grandiose firework! Astronomers are looking forward to it. It is believed that the Earth did not see a more magnificent starfall (in any case, there is no recorded evidence). But! We'll have to wait for the promised until 2126. It is unlikely that even those born just a day ago will survive to this point. So we will enjoy what is available to us now!