A couple of nights ago, Hawick, UK-based photographer
Sam Cornwell spent some time in the great outdoors taking pictures of the April Lyrids meteor shower that happens from April 16 to April 26 of each year. Just as he was about to call it quits and return home without a keeper, Cornwell captured
the above photo of a huge "fireball" streaking across the night sky.
After returning home and taking a closer look at the burst of frames he shot, Cornwell noticed that the meteor had left a "wicked smoke trail" in the sky in the shape of an expanding (then disappearing) 'Z.' He strung the frames together into
an animated GIF.
"Looks a bit like the mark of Zorro dontchafink?," Cornwell writes.
Reader Comments
You ought see this/ballistics
What it seems - nay almost certainly (96%) is - is that this meteor was itself spinning - but like a rifle bullet- and which, fortunately for us or such may be the nature of ballistics - was spinning around its trajectory's axis which coincided with its path as it hurried toward earth.
Such a ballistic mass, if so spinning, and if one side was softer/different that others, such would be more likely to 'smoke', and also, then that side would spin a smoke trail in the sky which would look like half of the 'double helix" we all know from DNA molecules, etc. THAT is EXACTLY what this looks like and probably is. [Which brings to mind the applicability here of that ultimate expression: "As above., so below." Right? (Above = asteroid; below = DNA.)
Any wizard in ballistics should be able to explain it better than I just have.
R.C.