Randy Halverson is a photographer who makes stunning time lapse videos of the night sky (like Tempest Milky Way and Plains Milky Way; seriously, if you haven't seen those, go watch them now). He's currently in the process of making a new video, and in one of the frames he happened to catch a bright meteor, a bit of cosmic fluff burning up as it rammed through our atmosphere. What's neat about this particular incident is that the meteor left behind a glowing streak that lasted for over half an hour!
You can see it there, the red twisty worm at the upper left, across the glow of the Milky Way [click to enbolidenate.] Technically, that's called a persistent train, and it's not actually smoke. As a meteoroid (the actual solid chunk of material) blasts through the air, it ionizes the gases, stripping electrons from their parent atoms. As the ...
