If you look at the
night sky then sometimes you may see what looks like a star flash across and then vanish.
This is a shooting star, or to give it its proper name - a meteor.
Meteorites are
pieces of rock that are flying round in space, they are usually quite small. When the Earth
meets up with a cloud of these as it travels through space the meteorites plunge down
through the Earth's atmosphere.
Like space craft the friction between the air and
the meteorite makes the rocky lumps very hot. So hot that they catch fire. It is this fiery
shower of sparks that you see as a shooting star that we call a meteor
Most
meteorites are so small that they burn up before they hit the ground. Some are much too big
to do this and the remains of these do get to earth. There is a large crater in Arizona in the
USA that was made by a meteorite and a very large meteorite fell in eastern Siberia in the
early part of the twentieth century destroying a huge area of forest. There is a very good
museum in Rochouart in central France that shows the effects of the meteorite that feel near
the village a long time ago. The largest meteorite of all was one that fell onto the Earth many
thousands of years ago, throwing up huge clouds of dust into the atmosphere causing the
planet to cool and probably ending the reign of the dinosaurs.
Astronomers think
that most of the craters on the Moon were made in this way.
If you are patient you
can see meteorites on most nights of the year. The map on this page will tell you where you
may see the most at different times of the year. It is useful to record those that you see on a
map.
