Spark image
Shooting stars

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 usually burn up before they hit the ground. However, some are much too big to do this and the remains of these do get to Earth.

 
 
 
© Keith Gibbs 2012