
Meteor showers from space - okket
https://www.meteorshowers.org/
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typpo
Hi, I built this and want to share some background:

Each data point corresponds directly to a real meteor entry into the Earth's
atmosphere recorded by NASA CAMS
([http://cams.seti.org](http://cams.seti.org)). Using this network of cameras,
we can capture enough information about a meteor to compute its orbit around
the sun. That means each particle has unique orbital parameters that
accurately reflect a former meteorite in space.

In order to visualize the cloud, the epoch of these orbits is randomized. In
other words, each particle begins at a random location in its orbit. This is
done so the visualization can be continuous rather than only showing a clump
of meteors from ~2012-2018.

Open source here:
[https://github.com/typpo/showers](https://github.com/typpo/showers)

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goodcanadian
<pedantic> A meteorite is an object that hits the ground. A meteor burns up on
the atmosphere. When they are still in space and only potential
meteors/meteorites, they are called meteoroids. </pedantic>

~~~
typpo
Yup, I realized this mistake after I posted but the edit option was not
available.

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mwest
We took a drive out to the Minninglow dark sky site in the Peak District
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_District](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_District))
in the small hours of this morning. It was quite amazing to witness the
streaks of the Perseid meteor shower! We counted 30 over the course of an
hour. No telescope required. The peak is meant to be tomorrow night. I highly
recommend trying to catch it if you can.

I found the "MeteorActive" and "Clear Outside" iOS apps quite useful for
picking the right time for the best view.

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LeoPanthera
> No telescope required.

In fact, you should not use a telescope even if you have one. Meteors move
fast and cross a significant fraction of the sky.

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codezero
I’m pretty impressed with how fast this renders on my iPad!

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taysix
Also what impressed me, but on my Android phone.

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Waterluvian
Loaded near instantly and played smoothly on my cheap android phone. Very
impressive.

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perl4ever
The zoom function zooms, but with unexpected delays and then gets stuck, but
it might be something strange about my laptop.

Also, my first reaction to the title was "there are meteor showers that aren't
from space?"

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dylan604
>Also, my first reaction to the title was "there are meteor showers that
aren't from space?"

I was hoping it would be imagery capture from the ISS.

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dylan604
I've known that some meteor showers are better than others, but this makes it
easy to tell visually with how dense/sparse each one appears.

This layout also made me wonder what would meteor showers look like from other
planets. Mars has a thinner atmosphere, so maybe only larger debris would be
visible?? But what about planets with thicker atmospheres?

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mwest
Mars has a lot of dust in the atmopshere, which makes Martian astronomy more
difficult. The Spirit rover did manage to capture an image of a comet though.
There's some more detail on Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_on_Mars#Comets_and_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_on_Mars#Comets_and_meteors)

If you're interested in the concept of "alien astronomy" from other planets,
I've used these "planetarium" style tools to play around with what it'd look
like:

Light: [http://stellarium.org/](http://stellarium.org/) Medium:
[https://celestia.space/](https://celestia.space/) Heavy:
[http://spaceengine.org/](http://spaceengine.org/)

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sonium
Why are all the meteors in this specific plane perpendicular to the planets'
plane?

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zeusly
That was the direction the comet took when it first moved through. If you
click on the dropdown menu in the top left, you can show all meteor showers at
once. They are all in planes.

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kazishariar
Insert MeteorActive" and "Clear Outside" into it. K tnx.

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glandium
I only see orbits and the milky way, and none of the planets and meteoroids.
Firefox Linux. Probably missing some webgl feature (other webgl demos work).

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white-flame
This is really nice looking, and I can only imagine it'd be even more amazing
in VR.

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partycoder
A meteor is defined as body entering the atmosphere from space. Therefore
"meteor showers from space" is redundant, just like saying "ATM machine".

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anamexis
I assume it's meteor showers [as viewed] from space, not a reference to their
origin.

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partycoder
Good point.

