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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why do meteors shoot across the sky? Why do I never see one coming towards me?
« on: 24/04/2017 23:01:34 »Quote from: David Cooper
I'm still waiting for someone to produce 3D photos of meteors.Great balls of fire! Its finally been done!
The Desert Fireball Network has 32 cameras set up in a remote limestone desert in Australia, with multiple cameras having overlapping views of the sky.
This allows them to determine the velocity and orbit of the orbiting body, and extrapolate where the larger ones have landed. This has allowed them to collect several meteorites that reached the ground.
See: http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/fact-sheets/what-is-the-desert-fireball-network/
Quote from: Matt
I never see one coming straight towards me?The glow of a meteor is seen when it is at an altitude of 75-100km.
You could fairly easily see meteor trails that pass within a 100km radius of your location.
To appear to be heading straight towards you, it would need to be aimed within (say) a 1km radius of your location.
So this represents only 1 in 10,000 meteors.
And the one that is heading directly towards you would not display the telltale streak that catches your eye - it would just be a boring dot, like just another star in the sky.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#Meteors
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Matt from New ZealandYou have lots of craters in New Zealand - but it's mostly from stuff coming out of the ground, rather than stuff ploughing into the ground!
I was surprised to see that Auckland (the largest city in NZ) had around 50 craters - and I even got to climb a few of them earlier this year!
...but a few of them had been leveled by quarrying operations over the past century.
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