KALAIN HO­SEIN

Me­terol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

A spec­tac­u­lar sight streaked across the night skies on Tues­day, just af­ter 7.19 pm, as a me­te­or burnt up in the at­mos­phere. The me­te­or was seen as far south as Venezuela, across Trinidad and To­ba­go, and as far north as An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

Ac­cord­ing to GOES-16 Geo­sta­tion­ary Light­ning Da­ta, which can de­tect the bright­ness of the burn­ing me­te­or in the at­mos­phere as light­ning based on its sen­sors, the me­te­or burnt di­rect­ly over north­ern Grena­da.

As it burnt in the at­mos­phere, the me­te­or cre­at­ed a green or teal glow and left a bright or­ange trail. The colours of the glow and trail in­di­cate the dom­i­nant chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of me­te­ors, with green sug­gest­ing a high mag­ne­sium con­tent. In con­trast, the or­ange trail shows a high sodi­um con­tent.

What a me­te­or is made out of is one of many fac­tors that de­ter­mine the colour that it ap­pears. The speed at which the me­te­or en­ters the Earth’s at­mos­phere can al­so af­fect its colour. The faster a me­te­or moves, the more in­tense the colour may ap­pear, ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal So­ci­ety (AMS). The AMS al­so added that slow me­te­ors are red or or­ange among fainter ob­jects, while fast me­te­ors fre­quent­ly have a blue colour.

Me­te­ors gen­er­al­ly be­gin to burn as they hit the Earth’s at­mos­phere, re­sult­ing in bright light em­a­nat­ing be­tween 65 and 120 kilo­me­tres above the Earth’s sur­face. Me­te­ors al­so dive in­to the at­mos­phere at speeds rang­ing from 40,200 to 257,500 kilo­me­tres per hour.

While there were no re­ports of any space rocks hit­ting the ground in Grena­da on Tues­day night, which would then be called me­te­orites, me­te­ors fre­quent­ly burn up world­wide, in­clud­ing in the Caribbean re­gion. Col­lo­qui­al­ly called shoot­ing stars, these me­te­or re-en­tries peak dur­ing me­te­or show­ers where the Earth pass­es through de­bris from comets, lead­ing to these pieces of space rock or dust burn­ing in the Earth’s at­mos­phere.

The Tau­rid Me­te­or show­er is un­der­way, which be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 10 and runs through No­vem­ber 20.

It is pre­dict­ed to peak on No­vem­ber 13.