When shooting stars fall across the sky, why don’t they just shoot in all directions? Why don’t we ever see a star shoot straight up from the horizon?
nevermind
Because wishes crash and burn; they don’t celebrate.
They do–or at least they can. Meteor showers like the Perseids appear to originate from a single point in space, and if that point is close to the horizon, some of them will appear to shoot “up”. Something like this picture.
Not sure what you mean.
We live on a sphere.
Are you asking why something does not come in low on the side and then jet through and up out of the atmosphere?
I wonder if perspective tricks would even let us discern, with the naked eye, that is what happened.
“Shooting Star” is a colloquial way of describing a meteor. When the object is outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, it is referred to as a meteoroid. As the object enters the atmosphere, and heats up to incandescence, it is called a meteor. If any part of it survives the trip, and impacts the surface of the Earth, that part is called a meteorite.
Most particles which are seen as meteors are about the size of a pea to a small pebble. Some are as small as a grain of rice or of sand. Many meteors are the debris left over after a comet has made too many passes into the inner Solar System and has lost all the volatile molecules which give comets their vapor tails, and the rocky particles which were entrapped in the icy matrix are now free to orbit the Sun in the path the ex-comet did.
Meteoroids follow a parallel path around the Sun. If that path happens to intersect the Earth’s atmosphere, we see the resultant meteors as a “Meteor Shower.” The same way railroad tracks appear to converge as they recede off toward the horizon, although we know they are, in fact, parallel, the meteors seem to be originating from one, relatively small, area of the sky. That area is referred to as the “radiant,” because the meteors appear to “radiate” from that area.
Most meteor showers happen at the same time every year, because the orbit the meteoroids take around the Sun intersects the orbit of the Earth at that particular point. The background stars at that time of the year will always be the same, and meteor showers are named for the constellation from which they appear to radiate.
The Stars, as I am sure you are aware, are mostly about the size of our Sun. Some are very much smaller, and some are very much bigger. Our Sun is classified as a “Yellow Dwarf” Star. Most of the stars we can see are larger and brighter than our Sun, because the smaller, dimmer ones are too faint to see at the vast distances they are from us. It should be totally obvious that what we call “shooting stars,” has absolutely nothing to do with actual stars.
Since meteors, as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere and seem to be coming from the “radiant,” can take any path from that area of the sky, the tracks of meteors against the background stars can be any orientation whatsoever. Through the course of the night, the radiant, like all other objects beyond the Earth, rises in the east, moves high into the sky, then eventually sets in the west. Throughout this time, meteors will strike the upper atmosphere and streak away from the radiant “in all directions.” If the radiant point happens to be low in the sky, near a horizon, many meteors will look as if they are “shooting up.”
The language of the OP leads me to surmise that you have never actually seen a meteor shower. You just missed the Perseids, which peaked on the morning of August 13, but the Draconids, on October 8, and the Orionids, on October 21 should be good to view. The Draconids are expected to produce a very good display this year, with possibly as many as 100 meteors per hour. There are “random” meteors, not associated with any shower, which strike the upper atmosphere about a million times a day. Usually, on a clear, dark night, away from city lights with no moon out, you should see about 4 to 6 meteors every hour or so. The Sky and TelescopeMagazine website is a good resource, and can answer many of your questions.
The best time to see meteors, generally, and to see the most during a shower, is the period after midnight and before dawn. At that time, your area of the Earth is on the “leading edge” of the planet, and we are “plowing through” the meteors. Before midnight, any meteors striking the atmosphere have to “catch up” with the Earth (which they easily do, since most meteors are traveling very much faster than the Earth is.)
Another eyewitness checking in. Shooting stars can indeed shoot “upwards”.
Though this has been answered I thought that I would point out that the reason you see many more “down” paths than “up” paths is that the only reason you see anything at all is because friction caused by the earth’s atmosphere has heated up the meteor so much that it glows. That friction also slows the meteor causing it to drop below the earth’s escape velocity. Then gravity does the rest.
Because they’re meteors, not Screaming Yellow Zonkers …
Plenty of stars shoot up, but sooner or later the money runs out…
Meteors do go in all directions. In fact, meteor showers are characterized by a point in the sky from which they appear to emanate, called the radiant, and which determines the name of the shower. Here’s a time-exposure of the Perseid meteor shower:
The Radiant of this shower is in the constellation of Perseus, hence the name. In fact, it emanates, at the height of the shower*, from the vicinity of the star cluster identified with Perseus’ hand. This is why I suggest, in my book, that this represents Perseus throwing the Eye of the Graiae in Lake Tritonis. There are lots of suggestive connections between the Perseid meteor shower and the myth of Perseus.
- The radiant isn’t a fixed point. It moves with time, and is in a different position every night.
In any event, regardless of which way is “up”, the fact that the meteors go in all directions means that the “shooting star” is as likely to be falling “up” as “down”.
I have, but only a couple of times. My impression is mostly formed by Disney’s logo and Looney Tunes cartoons. Thank you all for erasing my ignorance.
Another thought: As pointed out above, the only time a meteor will really look to the viewer as though it’s traveling in the “up” direction is if the radiant is close to the horizon, where the meteor starts obviously low down in the sky and then moves noticeably higher. (Meteors shooting outward in all directions from a location high above the horizon, on the other hand, all seem to be moving more or less “across the sky”, although you might think of ones traveling towards the horizon as “falling down”.)
But if the radiant is close to the horizon, then the horizon will block a lot of the non-upward-shooting meteors from your view, so the meteors you can see will appear a lot less frequently. So the viewer is more likely to get bored and stop watching, and thus miss the sight of a shooting star going noticeably “upward”.
I think one factor has to do with perspective. Some of the “upward” meteorites are following a path more-or-less toward you, so their apparent path, from your point of view, is shorter than one streaking across the sky. The shorter path reduces the chance that you’ll be watching that particular area in the sky at any given time. So it’s a type of confirmation bias; the ones you notice are the longer paths zooming across the sky.
Posters coming to the Dope to ask 
can only lessen the time that’s “taking longer than we thought” 
in a world is full of people who think that a jetliner crashing into the Pentagon should leave a neat, plane-shaped hole in the building’s wall, just as if Wile E. Coyote had been the pilot. :eek:
Also, there’s more atmosphere and often more light pollution between you and anything on the horizon; so anything too dim won’t be visible through the extra air and glare.
Really, most meteors are best described as being “across the sky”.
And if you’re reaaaaaly lucky, a meteor won’t appear to shoot at all – but rather get bigger and brighter. At this point, you may want to run.
____…--------=== * The More You Know
I’m not too proud to show myself to be a fool, so here goes. Bear with me, even if I have this all backwards.
This is the way I learned it, before the Hubble telescope was launched. We don’t even see meteors until the friction of the asmosphere makes them hot and glowing. All the ones we see are falling, relative to the Earth, and they will all either land somewhere or burn away before landing. The ones that appear to be rising are passing over us to land behind us. Similarly, when you watch a plane at night flying directly above you, it will seem to be climbing until it is straight overhead, even though it is flying level.
Now, if I got most of that right, you may want to scoff the next time you hear about the “meteoric rise” of some pop star. Rockets rise. Meteors fall.
Now, I await the shower of brickbats, if I’m wrong.