Understanding What is in Our Night Sky


Understanding What is in Our Night Sky

Oh my! During this past week my family enjoyed the Leonid show. We stood out in the chilly temperatures for about an hour and we saw well over 600 shooting stars. Wait, did I say shooting stars? Well that‘s not right! As a matter of fact I don‘t believe there has ever been a “shooting star“.
The sad truth is many folks don’t know what they are looking at when they gaze into the night sky. During our hour of delight on November18th, we stood with several local folks who were commenting about these wonders. One boy said they were shooting asteroids. One man said they were comet tails and another said they were stars shooting through the sky. The fellow who said it was a comet tail was the most accurate.

The real shame is that some of these adults were dolling out incorrect information that the kids will now believe. I tried to give out the correct information in a kind and loving matter, but was afraid to sound like a snooty know it all. The truth be known, I could not let those kids walk away thinking that stars were soaring across the sky.

My next series of articles will cover the basics of what we see in our night sky. It will help parents to teach their children about what they are actually seeing.

The spectacular show we witnessed last week was a result of the Leonid meteor shower. They were in fact meteors, not stars or comets.

A meteor can be seen as a streak of light flashing across the night sky. What we are seeing is actually piece of space debris, usually small pieces of rock or dust falling into our atmosphere and burning as they fall. These pieces of space debris can be as small as a grain of sand, sometimes smaller. As the wiz through our atmosphere they glow with heat and fire. We witness the glow as that “shooting star”. When a piece of space debris enters our atmosphere it is rubbed with a great deal of friction. This friction causes heat. I will include experiments later that will help demonstrate heat and friction.

An asteroid is some of that space debris (rocks, and dust) floating around in space. Comets leave space debris as they soar through space. The earth crosses the comet debris at the same time each year. When some of that debris enters our atmosphere it is called a meteroid and when it lands on earth it is then called a meteorite.

The copyright of the article Understanding What is in Our Night Sky in Homeschool Science is owned by Lisa Hawkins. Permission to republish Understanding What is in Our Night Sky in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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