{"id":16658,"date":"2023-11-04T10:56:11","date_gmt":"2023-11-04T05:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=16658"},"modified":"2025-04-04T22:26:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T16:56:28","slug":"taurid-meteor-showers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/taurid-meteor-showers\/","title":{"rendered":"Taurid meteor showers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Taurid meteor shower\u00a0<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Taurid meteors are debris from the\u00a0periodic Comet 2P\/Encke, which has the shortest known orbital period for a comet (takes only 3.3 years to make one complete trip around the sun).<\/li>\n<li>These showers are named after the\u00a0constellation Taurus.<\/li>\n<li>It is unique in that it comprises\u00a0two distinct streams (i.e., Southern and Northern Taurids), both of which have spread over time due to the gravitational influence of Jupiter.<\/li>\n<li>It can be seen with the naked eye and are best viewed at around midnight.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>These are modest, offering fewer than 10 shooting stars per hour on peak nights.<\/li>\n<li>However,\u00a0November is one of the better months for shooting stars because there are many sporadic meteors<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What are Meteoroid, Meteor and Meteorite?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Meteoroid is an object in space that range in size from dust grains to\u00a0small asteroids.<\/li>\n<li>When meteoroids enter Earth\u2019s atmosphere (or that of another planet, like Mars) at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or \u201cshooting stars\u201d are called meteors.<\/li>\n<li>When a\u00a0meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it\u2019s called a\u00a0Meteorite.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What is the significance of Meteors?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It helps in understanding early conditions and\u00a0processes in the solar system\u2019s history.<\/li>\n<li>These include the age and composition of different planetary building blocks, the temperatures achieved at the surfaces and interiors of asteroids, and the degree to which materials were shocked by impacts in the past.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is a comet?<\/h3>\n<p>A comet is a celestial object composed of ice, dust, rock, and various volatile compounds that orbits the Sun in an elongated or elliptical path. When comets approach the Sun, they heat up and release gas and dust in the form of a glowing coma (a diffuse, bright area around the nucleus) and often exhibit a tail that points away from the Sun due to the solar wind and radiation pressure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/space\/meteoroids\/how-to-watch-the-taurid-meteor-showers-peak-this-weekend-and-next\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>How to watch the Taurid meteor showers peak this weekend and next<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taurid meteor showers are debris from the periodic Comet 2P\/Encke, which has the shortest known orbital period for a comet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":16659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}