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The night of November 17-18 was the peak of the Leonid shooting star shower, but there were plenty of intermittent high clouds.
The day after, the night of November 18 to 19, the sky was completely clear and I was able to capture this eye-catching shooting star, with its tail, wider body and a slight color.
I captured it in the parish church of Sant Julià Sassorba, the highest parish in the municipality of Gurb, county of Osona. We can see the image in The Photos of the Readers of La Vanguardia.
The Leonid meteors are fragments of comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1865, and has an orbital period of 33.2 years.
Like every year, between November 6 and 30, the Earth passes through a ring populated with the fragments detached from comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle in previous passes near the Sun.
When one of these fragments (or meteoroids) comes into contact with the Earth’s atmosphere, it vaporizes due to friction with the air, thus creating the luminous glow that we know as a meteor or shooting star.
