5 Weird Astronomical Events

Crab supernova 1054

Crab Supernova was a supernova that was widely seen on Earth in the year 1054.

Crab Supernova was so bright that, it was easily visible to naked eye in daylight for 23 days and in the night sky for 653 days. The progenitor star was located in the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of 6,300 light years and exploded as a core-collapse supernova.

The cloudy leftovers of SN 1054 are now known as the Crab Nebula.

November 17,1966 Leonid Meteor Shower

The November 17, 1966 Leonid meteor shower was the largest meteor shower ever, it was reported that 150,000 meteors entered our atmosphere per hour, that’s over 40 per second;

Meteor shower takes place, whenever our earth passes through meteoric stream and meteoric stream is a leftover of comet, created when comet passes through inner solar system.

The Leonid meteor shower is caused when the Earth passes through the debris left by Comet Tempel-Tuttle which visits our solar system every 33 years, the last being in 1998.Hailey Comet Sighting, October 1982

The most famous comet is Halley’s Comet, because it can be seen more often than other comets, since it takes only 76 years to complete an orbit, and because it can be seen with the naked eye.

The last sighting of Halley’s Comet occurred on October 16, 1982, and the comet came closest to the sun on February 9, 1986. In March 1986, five robotic spacecrafts approached the comet to collect information about it. These spacecrafts brought back useful information about Halley’s Comet, and comets in general.

Sprites

Sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, giving rise to a quite varied range of sparkling in the night sky. They are caused by the discharges of positive lightning between a thundercloud and the ground.

Sprites appear as luminous reddish-orange flashes. They often occur in clusters within the altitude range 50–90 km above the Earth’s surface.

Sun dogs

Sun Dog or Mock Sun is a spectacular Atmospheric phenomenon caused by passing of rays from the plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold clouds; Sun Dogs are also known as Mock suns, because they just appear like sun in the sky and people often get terrified after seeing them as they think there are more than one sun on the sky.

Sun dogs typically appear when the sun is low to the horizon, usually just before to sunset or after sunrise, or during winter months at mid-latitudes.