                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2025 August 16

                        A Cool GIF of a 2025 Perseid
              Image Credit & Copyright: Renaud & Olivier Coppe

   Explanation: The camera battery died about 2am local time on August 12,
   while shooting in the bright moonlit skies from a garden in Chastre,
   Brabant Wallon, Belgium, planet Earth. But not before it captured the
   frames used to compose this cool animated gif of a brilliant Perseid
   meteor and a lingering visible trail known as a persistent train. The
   Perseid meteor, a fast moving speck of dust from the tail of large
   periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle, was heated to incandescence by ram
   pressure and vaporized as it flashed through the upper atmosphere at 60
   kilometers per second. Compared to the brief flash of the meteor, its
   wraith-like trail really is persistent. A characteristic of bright
   meteors, a smoke-like persistent train can often be followed for many
   minutes wafting in the winds at altitudes of 60 to 90 kilometers.

                      Tomorrow's picture: cloudy skies
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

