Glowworm (astronomy)
Encyclopedia
A glowworm is a luminous trail of a tiny meteor
, occasionally visible in the night sky during a meteor shower
.
The centimeter-sized comet
pieces can produce hundreds of fireballs
or more each hour. In some cases, particularly during the Leonids
, the fireballs make bright trails that can stay up for 10 to 15 minutes, according to astronomer
s.
METEOR
METEOR is a metric for the evaluation of machine translation output. The metric is based on the harmonic mean of unigram precision and recall, with recall weighted higher than precision...
, occasionally visible in the night sky during a meteor shower
Meteor shower
A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller...
.
The centimeter-sized comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
pieces can produce hundreds of fireballs
Meteoroid
A meteoroid is a sand- to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar System. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth's atmosphere is called a meteor, or colloquially a shooting star or falling star. If a meteoroid reaches the ground and survives impact, then it is called a meteorite...
or more each hour. In some cases, particularly during the Leonids
Leonids
The Leonids is a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky. They tend to peak in November.Earth moves through the meteoroid...
, the fireballs make bright trails that can stay up for 10 to 15 minutes, according to astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
s.
External links
- Leonid meteors may spawn 'glowworms' - CNN Science and Space