Shooting stars are not stars at all, they are meteors. Meteors are the flashes of light we see when pieces of interplanetary rock and dust called meteoroids burn up upon entering Earth’s atmosphere. When meteoroids enter our atmosphere from outer space, they are travelling at between about 10 and 70 km per second! Heated by friction, most quickly burn up. The few that survive and hit Earth’s surface are called meteorites.
- In 1920, the largest-known meteorite was discovered at Hoba West in Namibia, Africa–it weighs 60 tonnes!
- Some comets leave a trail of meteoroids in their wake. When Earth crosses the orbit of one of these comets, we can see meteor showers. These showers are named after the part of the sky from which the meteors seem to come. The Perseids, for example, are named after the constellation Perseus.
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