On November 27, 1885, an astronomer made the first known photograph of a meteor.
The picture was taken by Austro-Hungarian astronomer Ladislaus Weinek. He captured the trail of the meteor on a photographic plate in the Czech Republic. The meteor he captured was part of the Andromedid meteor shower. The Andromedids were associated with Biela's Comet, which broke apart in the 1850s. When Weinek observed the meteor shower in 1885, it was in the middle of a meteor storm. This means that there were way more meteors than usual. Skywatchers could see thousands of meteors per hour. What used to be a spectacular annual meteor shower is now hardly even visible. Instead of photographic plates or digital cameras, astronomers now have to use special tracking equipment to record images of Andromedid meteors.
The picture was taken by Austro-Hungarian astronomer Ladislaus Weinek. He captured the trail of the meteor on a photographic plate in the Czech Republic. The meteor he captured was part of the Andromedid meteor shower. The Andromedids were associated with Biela's Comet, which broke apart in the 1850s. When Weinek observed the meteor shower in 1885, it was in the middle of a meteor storm. This means that there were way more meteors than usual. Skywatchers could see thousands of meteors per hour. What used to be a spectacular annual meteor shower is now hardly even visible. Instead of photographic plates or digital cameras, astronomers now have to use special tracking equipment to record images of Andromedid meteors.
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TechTranscript
00:00 On this day in space.
00:03 On November 27, 1885, an astronomer made the first known photograph of a meteor.
00:09 The picture was taken by Austro-Hungarian astronomer Ladislaus Wajnek.
00:13 He captured the trail of the meteor on a photographic plate from the Prague Observatory in the Czech Republic.
00:19 The meteor he captured was part of the Andromedid meteor shower.
00:22 The Andromedids were associated with Bela's comet, which broke apart in the 1850s.
00:27 When Wajnek observed the meteor shower in 1885, it was in the middle of a meteor storm.
00:32 This means that there were way more meteors than usual.
00:35 Sky watchers could see thousands of meteors per hour.
00:39 What used to be a spectacular annual meteor shower is now hardly even visible.
00:43 Instead of photographic plates or digital cameras, astronomers now have to use special tracking equipment to record images of Andromedid meteors.
00:50 And that's what happened on this day in space.
00:54 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology