How do the falling stars differently and what are they?

At the end of almost every summer, you can enjoy an unusually beautiful spectacle - a plentiful starfall, when the sky at night is illuminated by luminous paths. Sometimes these are single "traces", sometimes it is a real fiery rain. In especially "productive" years, many people specifically go out for a night out to admire this spectacle. Lovers kiss in the light of a falling star. Romantics quietly mlejut from a kind of the painted sky, poets write verses. And how do the falling stars call it differently?

Superstitions and legends

The most famous and used sign: seeing a shooting star, you need to make a wish. I managed to do it before it went out. Do not have time - or you do not need it, or you do not really want this.

A much less well-known myth, to which religious people are more inclined: the falling star is an angel that carries the soul to the newborn.

The ancient Greeks believed that the falling star was a divine spear or arrow directed against the forces of evil. For the Slavs it represented death, for the Scandinavians - the soul that people and gods forgave, for Muslims - a strong and spiteful enemy.

Scientific explanation

Meanwhile, it has long been known even to older schoolchildren that a star can not fall. It is a huge ball of gas of unthinkable temperature. And if at least one such star crashes to Earth, there will probably be no dust from the latter either. So how do scientists call falling stars?

In fact, the colorful trail in the sky leaves a stone that has entered the uppermost layers of the earth's atmosphere. From the friction of the air, it is heated and begins to glow. Here's how. In other words, falling stars are called "meteors", if they are small and burn completely at a distance of eight to ten dozen kilometers, even in the atmosphere. Some meteors are so small that without binoculars, and even a telescope, they can not be seen.

How do the falling stars, the "splinters" of which reach the ground, are called in another way? It's meteorites. They are large in size, and most of them fly into the atmosphere relatively slowly, which allows the air to brake them. The meteorite looks like a fireball that rushes with a roar and roar across the sky, and after the fall leaves a crater on the surface. I must say that the "stones" of this size, and even flying into the Earth's shell at the right angle and at the appropriate speed, are quite rare, so the fall of each of them is permanently imprinted in human memory (the same Tunguska or the one that fell in Africa).

Sources of falling stars

Individual meteorites occur at any time of the year. This is due to the fact that some random space body was captured by the magnetic field of our (and any other) planet. Another thing - massive meteorite attacks (as the falling stars in another way, we have already found out).

Astronomers have accurately established that rains from falling stars are generated only by comets. This cosmic phenomenon itself consists in a solid body (usually ice, but there are also stone variants, although even comets from ice contain solid impregnations). When the comet approaches the luminary, the temperature of which is off scale, the ice evaporates, taking with itself the solid constituents of the nucleus. The tail is composed precisely of microscopic dust particles, carried away by what is called a "solar wind". The larger (and, correspondingly, heavy) stones to the wind are beyond the power. As a result, they create a donut around the celestial body , called "torus" by astronomers. And if this donut falls into the field of gravity of the planet, we have a stellar rain.

Starfall as a phenomenon

Two meteorite streams were noted. One of them is called the Leonids, the other is the Perseids, by the name of the star systems, from which they optically originate. The first of them are pleased with the waterfalls of stars in many years, but the latter - every summer. All because the flow of heavenly bodies, which the Earth encounters, also has its age. If he is "young," the starfall will be plentiful, if he has repeatedly met with our planet (and maybe with others on his way), his "stone warriors" have already been fairly weathered.

Why August?

What is most interesting, the August "star rains" regularly go from year to year. Astronomers are similar in opinions as to why the stars fall in August, and not in another month. They believe that the culprit is the tail of the comet named Swift-Tuttle, through which the Earth passes at this time. What is good about this starfall? That is accessible to anyone, you do not need any special equipment, and it does not matter where you are in the world. Seen well, and it pleases ordinary people, not just astronomers.

Of course, there are more spectacular rains from the stars. For example, the same Perseids promise simply grandiose fireworks! Astronomers anticipate it. It is believed that the Earth did not see a more magnificent starfall (in any case there are no registered certificates). But! Wait for the promised until 2126. It is unlikely that even children born just 24 hours ago will live to this point. So let's enjoy what is available to us now!