Bandung – PR BRIN. A meteor or what is commonly called a shooting star is a phenomenon of the appearance of the trajectory when a space object passes into the earth’s atmosphere. Meteors are caused by the earth’s orbit intersecting with the orbits of other space objects such as comets or asteroids, when the earth passes through the orbit of a celestial body, it will produce rocks that fall into the earth’s atmosphere.
Meteors occur at any time with an irregular duration and intensity and number. “Meteor showers are a predictable phenomenon with regular numbers and occur in certain months,” explained Andi Pangerang Hasanuddin, Researcher at the BRIN Space Research Center in the DOFIDA (Popular Scientific Fact Dialogue Dialogue in Space Science) program on the BRIN Indonesia YouTube channel on Wednesday ( 22/2).
Furthermore, Andi explained that the meteor shower did not have a negative impact on society and did not result in a thinning of the ozone layer, this was because some of the meteors would be completely burned up by the earth’s atmosphere. So that people can see this beautiful phenomenon without worry and anxiety, because meteor showers tend to be safe and harmless.
Meteor showers have different characteristics, intensities, times of observation and constellations, for example the Geminids with an intensity of around 100 meteors/hour are expected to occur in December 2023. “The closest is the Lyrid meteor which is expected to occur on April 23 2023, with an intensity 25 meteors/hour and can be seen starting at 10 pm to the east of Indonesia,” said Andi.
“To be able to observe meteor showers or other space phenomena effectively, it is necessary to have clear and supportive weather and free from cloud cover. Free from light pollution or artificial light interference produced by human activities. Field of view free from obstructions. If you want to capture a meteor shower camera needed all sky which is placed in the direction of the zenith (above) so that the camera will record until the night is over, then you can see the meteors passing,” said Andi.
Andi also explained that meteors that are considered potentially dangerous are meteors that have a size of more than 140 meters with a minimum intersection distance of about 5 million kilometers. “This needs to be watched out for because if it passes close to the earth with a distance less than the roche limit or the limit when celestial bodies interact with Earth’s gravity, if the distance is equal to the roche limit, the celestial body can break into pieces and form rings on earth. However, if the distance is less than the roche limit, it will allow it to fall to earth,” said Andi.
Andi informed the BRIN comrades that if they wanted to monitor falling space objects, BRIN comrades could access the orbit.brin.go.id page. Through this page, the public can get complete information about falling objects in space. Starting from monitoring falling objects in real time, which will be updated every 5 minutes and for monitoring results archived every 1 hour. The results of the analysis, to archives regarding objects falling into space in the past.
In the realtime monitoring section, the public can see details of falling space objects, starting from the name, owner of the fallen object if it is an artificial space object, altitude, prediction of when it will fall, as well as the trajectory of the falling object, from the world map as well as Indonesia. For amateur astronomers can also see the inclination data as well as the farthest and closest distance to the falling object. (KPV, ed. NU/AKB)
