A different astronomy and space science
related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.

If you scroll down my feed to November you will see a striking meteor lights up the sky. Here is how its captured on a single frame of a long timelapse sequence as the Milky Way rises above Cerro Paranal observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile, located under one of the world’s most pristine night sky. ⁣ ⁣Known as fireball these bright meteors are rare to see and even less likely to photograph. The brilliant light is not caused so much by the mass of the object, but by its high kinetic energy generated by the speed. Most visible meteors are just grains of sand in size, too small to reach the ground as a meteorite. But a fireball like this is generated by a larger tennis ball object and may reach the ground in form of a small rock depending on its composition (ice, metal or rock). About 10,000 tons of this material falls to Earth surface (and water) each year in form of rocks to micrometeorite dust. Text from my book The World at Night, chapter 4. #fireball #shootingstar #astrophotography #twanight #atacama