NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Collection

The Spectrum of a Meteor

Chasing the brief flash of a meteor [ http://science.nasa…25jun_perseids2004.h tm ] trail across the sky with a very large telescope is a nearly impossible task. But on May 12, 2002, astronomers got lucky [ http://www.eso.org/…pr-19-04.html ], as a bright meteor chanced across the narrow slit of their spectrograph [ http://outreach.atn…spectrographs.html ] at the Paranal Observatory [ http://www.eso.org/…]. At the time, the spectrograph was being used to study the light [ http://csep10.phys.…absorption.html ] from a supernova, separating and recording the many near-infrared [ http://www.ipac.cal…irregions.html ] emission lines produced by atoms in the distant stellar explosion. Below this artistic montage of a meteor streak and Very Large Telescope units [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] at Paranal, panel a shows the near-infrared sky background spectrum and the May 12 meteor combined. Panel b shows the emission spectrum of the meteor alone, after subtracting away the background contributions. The meteor emission is due to colliding oxygen and nitrogen atoms and molecules in the superheated [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] air along the glowing trail [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] at an altitude of about 100 kilometers.

P. Jenniskens (SETI Inst. [ http://www.seti-ins…]), E. Jehin (ESO) et al. [ http://www.eso.org/…pr-19-04.html#note1 ], FORS1 [ http://www.eso.org/…fors.html ]/VLT [ http://www.eso.org/…vlt/ ], ESO [ http://www.eso.org/]

May 12, 2002

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

ESO

VLT

Very Large Telescope

meteor

2002

http://antwrp.gsfc.…

SPD-APOD-ap040812