What is a Meteor?
After the Earth and Planets were formed Billions of years ago, there were tiny pieces of rock left floating in space. Literally billions of these tiny residual pieces now orbit around the Sun throughout the solar system. We call them meteoroids. They vary in size from tiny, not much more than dust particles to huge, the size of a mountain. As the Earth travels on its yearly journey around the Sun it often collides with these meteoroids at very high speeds, thousands of miles per hour. As they crash into our upper atmosphere they begin to cause friction with the gases and heat up causing a brief streak of light across the night sky. It is during this flash of burning that we call them meteors or shooting stars. The smallest meteors last for a mere second or two as they disintegrate but some of the larger ones can last for longer and appear much brighter as they burn up, very bright ones are called fireballs. Some fireballs are bright enough to be seen in daylight. Some of the larger one
Particles from the “debris trail” that produce a meteor shower are typically no larger than a grain of sand to pebble size. As these particles enter and interact with Earth’s atmosphere they heat up thus becoming the visible meteors. The heat that is produced by a meteoroid entering our atmosphere is a result of the ram pressure, not friction as commonly thought. Ram pressure refers to the pressure exerted on a moving body through a fluid medium. The ram pressure (caused by the rapid compression of the air in front of the meteoroid) heats up the air which then heats the meteor and results in the streak of light that we see.
A meteor is the streak of bright light that can be seen from Earth when a meteorite enters the atmosphere. The actual object entering the atmosphere is called a meteorite, and it is usually a piece of an asteroid. The term meteor refers only to the image created by this entry – a bright light cascading from the sky – often referred to as a falling star. The bright light of a meteor is a result of heat produced by the meteorite entering the atmosphere. Rather than friction, this heat is produced by ram pressure: the pressure exerted on a body moving through a fluid medium. This pressure heats the meteorite and the air around it to such a degree that the image of the meteor can be seen from earth. Although meteorites are often referred to as meteors or meteor rocks, this usage is not technically correct. While most meteorites come from asteroids, it has been speculated that some may come from comets, and others likely come from the Moon or Mars. The meteorites discovered on Earth are oft
Most of us see meteors by chance. You’re out with a friend on a dark night, and suddenly you see a bright object streak across the sky. You shout, “Look at the shooting star,” but by the time your friend looks, it’s gone. If you’re lucky, you see it together. But can you try to see a meteor? You bet. Simply go out at night and watch and wait. Lie on your back, and look up at the sky. If you don’t get too cold and you don’t fall asleep, you’ll probably see about five meteors an hour, though you can’t predict exactly where or when they’ll appear. These sporadic meteors are just chance collisions between a bit of space dirt and Earth’s atmosphere. A typical meteor has a mass that is only a fraction of a gram. When it hits the atmosphere, it is probably going 10-40 kilometers per second (20,000-90,000 miles per hour). When it enters Earth’s atmosphere, its surface heats up because of friction. Bits of matter fall away, and atoms evaporate from the surface to form a hot, gaseous envelope ar
