Myth: A meteor shower results from asteroids vaporising in the Earth's atmosphere Fact: Not true. A meteor shower is primarily attributed to comets or comet debris vaporising in the atmosphere
Subaru Astronomers Measure Meteoroid Tunnels in Earths Atmosphere When meteoroids flash through the Earths atmosphere, they bore tunnels through the air, leaving behind narrow meteor tracks that are heated by the collision of the fast-moving incoming object with atoms of highly diluted atmospheric gases. Most meteoroids are bits of space debris the size of a grain of sand. The width of the tracks they make has long been known to be narrower than a meter, but until recently, more precise measurements have been impossible to make. Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the University of Tokyo, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the University of Electro-Communication, the RIKEN research institute, and Nagano National College of Technology have evaluated the diameters of the heated tunnels left behind as typical sporadic meteors as penetrated the upper atmosphere, scattering atmospheric atoms and releasing photons of light. The team compared the number of special photons produced as a meteoroid collided with the atmospheric atoms and found a typical column width as narrow as a few millimetres across. This is the first time the width of a meteor track column has been precisely measured using a physical analysis of the light emitted during the event. The study was the result of an observation run at Subaru on the nights of 12-15 August, 2004. During that time, observers imaging the Andromeda galaxy using Subarus Suprime-Cam noticed a number of meteoroid tracks traversing the field of view of the camera. As M31 is fairly close to the radiant of the Perseid meteor shower (which peaked just before the start of the observation) observers took a detailed look at the tracks.