Time-Lapsed Vid: What It Looks Like When Meteors Slam Into Earth’s Atmosphere

[The Seeker]

NASA astronaut Don Pettit on the International Space Station whipped out his camera to take photos of the April Lyrid meteor shower as seen from space.

NASA describes the footage as “revealing breathtaking images of Earth at night with meteors ablating — or burning up — in the atmosphere.†Check out the time-lapsed video:


[video]http://www.space.com/15784-lyrid-meteor-shower-space-station-video.html[/video]


What are those “brilliant purplish-white bubbles of light†— as described by Space.com? According to NASA, it’s lightening.

 

[DaveM]

Re: Time-Lapsed Vid: What What It Looks Like When Meteors Slam Into Earth’s Atmospher

The video would not play for me

 

[avion]

Re: Time-Lapsed Vid: What What It Looks Like When Meteors Slam Into Earth’s Atmospher

Wow - thanks for posting.

...

 

[CarlS]

Very cool! Thanks for the post.

 

[Rocky]

When my kids were small, and we used to spend a lot of time down at our cottage on the lake away from city lights, it was fun to sit out on a starry night and watch for "shooting stars."
Some were brief but some were quite spectacular as they burned up in the atmosphere.

 

[CarlS]

Rocky, it is like that on the ranch. No ambient city light to spoil the majesty night skies.

 

[Rocky]

Just to extend this a bit more, when I was in the Andes Mountains four years ago we were up so high and the skies were so clear at night it was almost like you were up in the sky among the stars.
I had never seen the air so clear and the stars so bright. You felt like you could reach up and touch the stars.
It was wonderful!!

 

[CarlS]

I have experienced that in the desert southwest of the US. No humidity or pollutants to interfere.