Most of us like bright stuff, especially if they’re imposing due to their size. But we must admit that they become a little too frightening when they’re capable of illuminating the entire sky above our heads. A recent meteor qualifies very well for the description, as it caused a major flare for the Texas residents to feast their eyes on.
There’s the Leonid meteor shower going on, as Earth passes through the debris left by comet Tempel–Tuttle. The meteor shower occurs every year, and you are free to see some footage of the amazing celestial show below:
The Brownsville National Weather Service reveals that the shooting star itself was part of the Leonid meteor shower.
No havoc reported
According to the National Weather Service, there’s no sign of any damage caused by the bright and imposing meteor. This means that the cosmic object successfully burned up in the atmosphere.
As Wikipedia informs us, the Leonids got their name from the location of their radiant, meaning all the way in the constellation Leo. The meteors are radiating from that point in the sky, and their proper Greek name should be Leontids. Being anywhere near the trajectory of these meteors is cosmic suicide, as they are hurtling at about 72 kilometres per second.
The Leonids are also capable of producing meteor storms, meaning very large outbursts once every 33 years. The activity during such events exceeds 1,000 meteors per hour, and sometimes there are over 100,000 meteors per hour.
You might have enough of the Earth considering the latest events, but you also shouldn’t cling to the idea that things are necessarily better beyond our planet’s atmosphere. The Universe is generally a very unfriendly place, especially if you’re not willing to play by its rules, meaning to obey the laws of physics.
