Meteors, or shooting stars, can be seen on just about any clear night. Simply follow a few simple rules and suggestions. First find a safe and dark location, away from city lights and preferably with a wide-open view of the sky. Bring a sleeping bag, blanket, or chaise lounge and recline on it facing in just about any direction. Meteors fall from all parts of the sky. On average, any clear night will see 6 to 10 meteors each hour all night long. It’s as simple as that, just kick back, stare at the sky, and wait to see whatever may come. A separate topic is to be posted on Meteor Showers (coming soon)
NOTICE* Our Coleman Observatory facility is open to everyone who wants to come up and spend some quality time in our yard as a safe place to watch meteors, use a small telescope, anything related to astronomy. Inquisitive minds are always welcome to visit and enjoy the night sky from Coleman Observatory anytime. (No alcohol or other substances permitted)
**MORE INFO** A normal meteor is only as big as a grain of sand, frequently smaller. That object entering our atmosphere at typically 30,000mph or MORE, causes air molecules to glow as it comes into the thicker parts of our upper atmosphere. What you SEE when witnessing a meteor is a “tube” of glowing gas, (usually a few yards wide and sometimes miles long) just like a fluorescent light bulb. That meteor is caused to glow from the energy provided by that friction with the air molecules and you see the glowing tube of molecules after they’ve been heated to fluorescence. A long-lingering, (2-3 sec. +) glowing meteor trail is called a train, and some trains can last for a minute, or on rare occasions, even longer.
Definitions: (source; Oxford Astronomy Encyclopedia; 2002; Oxford University Press, New York, NY; pp. 257-261)
Meteor - Brief streak of light seen in a clear night sky when a small particle of dust, a meteoroid, burns itself out in Earth's upper atmosphere.
Meteorid - Small natural body in orbit around the Sun.
Meteorite - Natural object that survives its fall to Earth from space.