A "falling star" or a "shooting star" has nothing at all to do with a star!

These amazing streaks of light you can sometimes see in the night sky are caused by tiny bits of dust and rock calledmeteoroids falling into the Earth's atmosphere and burning up. The short-lived trail of light the burning meteoroid produces is called a meteor. Meteors are commonly called falling stars or shooting stars. If any part of the meteoroid survives burning up and actually hits the Earth, that remaining bit is then called a meteorite. There are many little chunks of rock present in space. Their sizes range typically from the size of a grain of dust to the size of a golf ball (the latter being more impressive in the night sky, but also more rare). As the Earth moves around the Sun, it will run ito some of these small rocks that collide with the atmosphere at great velocities. Going through the atmosphere they begin to heat up, start to glow, and then burn down. This is what we see when we look at a shooting star (which we call a meteor). There are millions of such particles colliding with the atmosphere every day (I mean day and night). But since you can only see them at night, and you can only look at a small part of the sky at once, when stargazing you can expect to see a shooting star every 10 to 15 minutes. This is on a regular night. When we get meteor showers, we get many more. A meteor shower happens when the Earth goes through a region of space that is especially filled with dust and chunks of rock. Therefore we get many more meteors at these times. More precisely, meteor showers happen when Earth, on its way around the Sun, passes through the path of a comet. That's because as a comet orbits near the Sun, it starts to melt down and ejects on its path lots of dust and chunks of rock. The yearly meteor showers are caused by this. In any given night, you can also see more shooting stars (in fact about twice as many) just before dawn. That's because at dawn we are facing the direction in which the Earth is moving, so we intercept more of the stuff in space.

Meteor showers occur when dust or particles from asteroids or comets, entering the Earth's atmosphere at very high speed. When they hit the atmosphere, meteors rub against air particles and create friction, heating the meteors to more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat vaporizes most meteors, creating what we call shooting stars (most become visible at around 60 miles up). Some large meteors splatter, causing a brighter flash called a fireball, which can often be heard up to 30 miles away. Why do stars fall down from the sky? It is actually a misconception that stars fall down from the sky! What many term "shooting stars" are in fact pieces of rocky debris from space called meteoroidsthat fall into Earth's atmosphere and burn up due to atmospheric ram pressure, which heats the meteoroid so that it glows and creates a shining trail of gases that looks very similar to what a star might look like if shot from a gun; while in transit, these meteoroids are called meteors. Sometimes meteors occur

in highly numerous and visible showers, but I disagree with Jim Murphy that it is because they want to be close to you. More likely, Earth entered the path of a trail of debris left by a comet. It's not all about you, you selfish git. WISE GEEK A shooting star is not actually a star, nor does it shoot. It is officially called a meteor, a chunk of extraterrestrial rock pulled into the Earth's atmosphere by gravity. Most meteors are closer to dust or sand in size, not the large boulders frequently seen in science fiction movies. As these tiny fragments of rock fall through the Earth's outer layers of air, they experience a build-up of frictional heat, which causes the individual particles glow brightly as they continue to fall and burn up. Observers on the ground may catch a fleeting glimpse of one as it streaks across the night sky. It is easy to see how the shooting star earned its nickname. People are accustomed to seeing fixed points of light in the night sky, commonly known as stars and planets. What they're not so accustomed to is observing one of these points of light falling out of place or suddenly burning out. When someone sees a meteor heat up and streak across the sky, it often looks like a real star dropping out of the sky. A particularly large meteor may continue to glow for several seconds, appearing to shoot across the sky under its own power. Therefore, the idea of a shooting star has become a popular shorthand to describe the phenomenon. While a meteor may not be an actual star, it is definitely from outer space. The universe may look empty, but in actuality, it contains significant amounts of dust and rocks. When cometsapproach stars, for example, the heat of the star often causes a trail of space dust. If the Earth passes through one of these trails, the result can be a meteor shower or even a meteor storm. Instead of seeing an occasional shooting star, a viewer on Earth can expect to see dozens or even hundreds in a few hours' time. Some of these meteor showers, such as the Perseids and Leonids, occur on a regular basis, so those interested in viewing them should find a clear field away from city lights during these events. A meteor can be seen with the naked eye, although it requires constant scanning of the night sky and a little luck, since the light can appear suddenly and burn out quickly. Local astronomers or meteorologists should be able to provide a peak time for maximum activity during a meteor shower. What is a falling star (Lansing State Journal, January 14, 1998) and what causes it to fall?

Falling stars are small, solid bodies that enter the Earths atmosphere as they travel through space. These stars are commonly called meteors. Meteors can enter the our atmosphere with a velocity that ranges from ten to seventy km/sec. These meteors can plunge into the atmosphere at velocities ranging from ten to seventy kilometers per second. Consequently, the friction that is created is great enough to cause the meteor to begin burning up which produces the light that we refer to as a falling star. A meteor shower occurs when hundreds of meteors fall simultaneously. Therefore, our atmosphere acts as a buffer zone which protects the Earths surface from

impacts by many meteors that burn up as they travel through our atmosphere. In space there is no such barrier, so these meteors don't burn up. Since the moon does not have an atmosphere as thick as ours, many scientists have suggested that some of the craters on the moon may have resulted from the impacts of meteors. Meteors that impact Earth are called meteorites. These meteorites are composed primarily of rocks and dust. Meteorites are categorized according to their composition. Some of these categories include iron, stony iron and chondrite. Most meteorites fall into the chondrite category. Many of the materials found in meteorites are also found in the Earths mantle and crust of. The mantle is the dense molten core of the Earth which we see as the lava that erupts from volcanoes. The crust is the surface of Earth that we live on. In 1908 a meteor struck Siberia. While no crater was created by the impact of the meteorite, trees were flattened and the damage that resulted spanned a 60 kilometer area. Meteors Meteors are streaks of light, usually lasting just a few seconds, which people occasionally see in the night sky. They are sometimes called "shooting stars" or "falling stars", though they are not stars at all. Meteors are caused by the entry of small pieces of rock, dust, or metal from space into theatmosphere at extremely high speeds. These particles, called "meteoroids" when they are floating around in space (think of very small asteroids), are traveling at incredible speeds of tens of kilometers per second (tens of thousands of miles per hour) when they streak into the atmosphere. The incredible pressure meteoroids experience when they collide with Earth's atmosphere shatters them, transferring energy to atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, which then release the energy by glowing. This glow produces the bright trails of lightin the sky we see as meteors. Most meteoroid particles are quite small, ranging in size from a grain of sand to a pea-sized pebble. Almost all of them disintegrate in the atmospherelong before reaching the ground. Very rarely, a larger meteoroid actually survives to strike the ground, creating ameteor crater in a huge explosion. This explosion often vaporizes whatever solid material is left of the meteoroid after its fiery flight through the atmosphere. Sometimes, however, pieces of the meteoroid survive and are found in the crater or nearby. These chunks of rock or metal are called meteorites. Meteors are not the same thing as comets. Meteors appear briefly as they streak through the sky. Comets are much larger objects that are actually still out in space. Comets can form tails, and though they do change position from night to night, they don't move fast enough for the eye to notice; they seem to hang in place in the sky. There is a connection, though, between some comets and some meteors. Several times each year Earth passes across the orbit of a comet, where dust and small bits of rock from the comet have been left behind. When this happens we can see many meteors in a single night; sometimes as many as 100 or more per hour! These events are called meteor showers. Especially bright meteors are called fireballs. Some fireballs are so bright that they can be seen in the daytime. It would be possible to see meteors above any planet that has an atmosphere. A

camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured a picture of meteor in the sky above Mars in 2004! How can you remember whether something is a meteor, a meteoroid, or a meteorite? Here's how I do it! When they are out in space, like asteroids, they are called meteoroids. When they are streaking through theatmosphere as bright flashes of light, we call them meteors - which reminds me of meteorology, which is the science concerned with weather and the atmosphere. [Meteorology is not the science of meteors!] When they reach the ground, we call them meteorites - which reminds me of the stalactites and stalagmites that are found under the ground in caves. I hope that helps you remember too!