why don;t the stars that make up the big dipper, little dipper, lion etc. ever become shooting stars ?

Answer 1

Because they're actually stars.... shooting stars are not.. They're meteors or meteorites.
The glowing appearance they take on as they streak across the night sky is actually them burning up in the earths atmosphere. The stars, however, are much MUCH further away.

Answer 2

One of the stars of the little dipper or Ursa Minor can be used as a location reference to find the big dipper or Ursa Major. "The constellation Ursa Minor contains the group of stars commonly called the Little Dipper. The handle of the Dipper is the Little Bear's tail and the Dipper's cup is the Bear's flank. The Little Dipper is not a constellation itself, but an asterism, which is a distinctive group of stars. Another famous asterism is the Big Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major. The most famous star in Ursa Minor is Polaris, the North Star. This is the star that is nearest to the North Celestial Pole. If you stood at the north pole, Polaris would be almost directly overhead. If you can spot Polaris in the sky, you can always tell which way is north. In addition, the angle of Polaris above the horizon tells you your latitude on the Earth. Because of this, Polaris was the most important star for navigating at sea. To find Polaris, first find the Big Dipper. If you follow the two stars at the end of the cup upwards (out of the cup of the Big Dipper), the next bright star you will run into is Polaris. The distance to Polaris on the sky is about five times the angle between the two stars at the end of the cup of the Big Dipper. Because they are so useful for finding the all-important North Star, these two stars are known as the Pointer Stars. They are also called Dubhe and Merak (Merak is the one at the bottom of the cup). Because the Earth's axis is precessing (like a spinning top wobbles around), Polaris is only temporarily at the North Pole. In about 14,000 years, Vega will be the North Star and another 14,000 years after that, it will be Polaris again. Precession is caused by the the gravitational attraction of the Sun and the Moon. It only happens because the Earth is not quite spherical. "

Answer 3

A "falling star" or a "shooting star" actually has nothing at all to do with a star. These streaks of light that you sometimes see in the night sky are caused by tiny bits of dust and rock called meteoroids 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.

The particles that enter our atmosphere during a meteor shower or when you see a shooting star are usually very small. Some are no larger than a grain of sand. Thousands of these particles enter our atmosphere each day and most of them burn up well before they can reach the ground.

Answer 4

The person who said they are asteroids are totaly wrong.

Actually it's because shooting stars are actually
Meteors , which actually are pieces of Comets!
or fragments of comets as they are usually called in the astronomy world.
So if they are pieces of comets why are they called shooting stars? because waaaaaaay back in the 200 - 1600's before they knew what we know about meteors , they thought they were falling stars .

They would shoot accross the sky so that's how they got called shooting stars !

Stars don't ever fall , they explode.

Answer 5

"Shooting stars" is a misnomer; the term actually refers to particles of dust (like from a comet trail) that burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, leaving a bright trail of light as they do. They look like stars shooting across the sky, but they are not stars.

The stars in the constellations are actual stars, which are millions of light-years away from Earth. While they do move across the sky(due to the Earth's rotation), they move far too slowly to "shoot" across the sky.

Answer 6

Shooting stars are actually small asteroids burning up as they enter the atmosphere. Thus real stars will never be shooting ones.

Answer 7

"shooting" stars are bits of rock. The stars in the constellations are all much bigger than Earth. If they got anywhere close to Earth, we'd be vaporized.

Answer 8

"Shooting stars" is just a fancy name for a meteor entering Earth's atmosphere. If a star actually came hurdling toward us, everyone on Earth would be dead.

Answer 9

shooting stars aren't actually STARS... when the stars life (energy) is depleted it does not drop from the sky... it just transforms itself....it's color would change...

shooting stars are just like meteorites that drop from meteors when they cross the planet or they can be just sparks from the reaction of gases in the galaxy... but most of the time it's a meteorite