Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: The camera battery died about 2am local timeon August 12,while shootingin the brightmoonlit skiesfrom a garden in Chastre, Brabant Wallon, Belgium, planet Earth.But not before it captured the frames used to compose this coolanimated gif of a brilliant Perseid meteor and a lingeringvisible trail known as apersistent train.The Perseid meteor,a fast moving speck of dust from the tail oflarge periodicComet Swift-Tuttle,was heated to incandescence byram pressureand vaporized as it flashedthrough the upper atmosphere at 60 kilometers persecond.Compared to the brief flash of the meteor, itswraith-like trail really is persistent.A characteristic of bright meteors,a smoke-like persistent train can often be followed for many minuteswafting in the winds at altitudes of 60 to 90 kilometers.