Click on the above image and watch a Leonid [ http://www.skypub.c…] meteor explode. The tremendous heat generated by the collision of a small sand-bit moving at 70 kilometers/second with the Earth's upper atmosphere causes the rock-fragment to heat up, glow brightly, and disintegrate. In some cases, the meteor [ http://medicine.wus…] literally explodes leaving a visible cloud that dissipates slowly. The above image shows just such an explosion for a bright meteor [ http://www.skypub.c…] from the recent Leonid Meteor Shower [ http://astrobiology…]. Clicking on the above image [ http://rotsei.lanl.…] will start a (4.2 Megabtye) movie of thirty 1-minute exposures showing the explosion cloud dissipate. Each movie frame, taken with the ROTSE [ http://www.umich.ed…] telescope early 17 November, is 8 degrees across - 16 times the diameter of the full moon. Near the middle of the sequence, a less bright meteor moves through the field.
