Green Meteors Look Amazing From Anywhere, Be It South India Or Australia
Wonder what makes the meteor look so green? It's actually based on what the metor is made up of.
This year might have been the saddest one, primarily because of the catastrophe COVID-19 is causing, but it has been an amazing year for astronomers and avid stargazers.
Whether it was the beautiful eclipses that we¡¯ve seen or even the Neowise comet that put us all in a state of awe last month.
Prasenjeet Yadav
And this streak continues. A few weeks ago, South India¡¯s Prasanjeet Yadav --a molecular ecologist by profession -- captured a rather breathtaking image of a green meteor passing through South India. Talk about great timing.
Around the same time, people in Sydney spotted a similar green meteor shooting across the pitch dark sky at night. Many people spotted this green ball of fire, capturing them on their smartphones, giving us all major Green Lantern feels.
A green meteor off the coast of Australia pic.twitter.com/4RkknZoSj8
¡ª Engineering (@engineeringvids) August 5, 2020
The meteor looks truly breathtaking!
Just seen a green meteor ?? pic.twitter.com/bnlwMQmkNB
¡ª Fernando ??DonDale?? (@LaVieDouce2) July 31, 2020
Green meteor origin story
You may be wondering that normally meteor showers have been either white or golden, but green surely looks ominous -- like some alien UFO is coming to attack us. However, that isn¡¯t really the case.
It is no news that when a meteor enters Earth¡¯s atmosphere, it comes in contact with immense heat -- that¡¯s why shuttles coming down from the international space station are equipped with heat shields to prevent them from melting and disintegrating, Meteors don¡¯t have such heat shields, so they burn up.
Guys, we just saw one of the craziest things we have ever seen in our lives and I managed to capture some of it. A meteor for the ages! pic.twitter.com/kPIchIPREV
¡ª Amber Coffman (@Amber_Coffman) July 29, 2020
And meteors normally contain different kinds of minerals or metals. The green glow of a falling meteorite occurs from nickel when it burns up in the atmosphere. And one of the most common metallic meteors are made of iron and nickel, so the green colour.
Similarly, a meteor with oxygen and nitrogen results in the glow to turn red, calcium turns it bright purple and magnesium turns it cyan-teal blue. The intensity of this glow tends to get the brightest when meteors are going through the atmosphere at high speed.
Have you ever gotten a chance to spot a meteor shower? What colour was that? Tell us in the comments below.
