what is a shooting star? Please explain it?

Answer 1

A shooting star may be:

-a meteor
-a few species of flowering plants, including Dodecatheon meadia and Hoya multiflora.
-the P-80 Shooting Star, the first U.S. jet-fighter aircraft
-Shooting Star (band) from Kansas City
-Shooting Star (comics), a Marvel Comics character
-Shooting Stars, a UK television comedy panel-game
-a Shooting Star Press, a professional-wrestling aerial technique
-Shooting Star (song by Bad Company)

If you mean the meteor, it is the visible path of a meteoroid that enters the Earth's (or another body's) atmosphere, commonly called a shooting star or falling star. Shooting star is a meteoroid that has entered the earth's atmosphere. It will then become brightly visible due to the heat produced by the ram pressure. If a meteor survives its transit of the atmosphere to come to rest on the Earth's surface, the resulting object is called a meteorite. A shooting star striking the Earth or other object may produce an impact crater.

Answer 2

As a member of the British and Irish Meteorite Society (BIMS) (a show off and insufferable know-it-all) I couldn't NOT answer this question.

If you see a shooting star, it is almost certainly a tiny, tiny speck of comet dust. By tiny, I mean smaller than a grain of sand. A speck that big will produce a bright streak (known as a meteor train) which wil persist in the sky for a second or so.

An egg sized lump is likely to be a stony or iron meteorite. This will create a truly spectacular fireball leaving a train in the sky for maybe 10-30 seconds, glowing in the sky.

However, all this stuff burns up at a height of 60-100miles up and nothing makes it down.

It needs a baseball sized lump of stuff for anything to survive to the ground. Forget the myths. There's no craters, they're not glowing hot when they land. When you see one "land" just behind the next hill, it's actually over 100 miles away. There's no sound as they fall either.

Meteorites are all slowed down very well by the atmosphere. They stop at about 6 miles up and simply fall the rest of the way, landing cold.

Most meteorites are no bigger than an egg when they land. Almost all of it is burned up on the way down. They can be as small as a pea. They're not spherical...EVER.

Shooting stars which become meteorites are the most ancient material on the earth. They're also rarer than diamonds. They provide scientists with important clues on the history of the solar system as relics from a time before the earth formed.

I also think they're fascinating.

Answer 3

shooting star is not actually a star. It is a meteor.

A meteor is the light you see when a meteoroid comes in contact with the Earth's atmosphere. The "ram pressure" of this object, which is usually rock or rock + iron, smacking into our atmosphere creates heat, and the meteor begins to burn.

When our Solar System was forming, there was a lot of junk left over. If our Earth's orbit intersects with this junk, it will burn in our atmosphere.

Most meteoroids are tiny (dust and pebble sized) and burn up before they can reach the Earth. Some hit the atmosphere the wrong way and skip across it like a stone thrown to skip across a lake, and eventually escape, albeit somewhat smaller now. Some manage to hit the Earth. There's one in the Adler Planetarium in Chicago that is huge, about three feet long and a foot through the middle. (When they make it to the groud they are called meteorites.)

Meteor can come one at a time, but there are also meteor showers, times during the year when you can expect to see a lot of meteors (10-80 per hour). This happens when the Earth passes through the trail left by a comet. Meteor showers are named for the constellation from which they appear to radiate. The most famous is the Perseids, which radiate from Perseus, and are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle.

Source(s):
Sky and Telescope publishes a Meteor Shower schedule. Here's the one for 2006.
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/obj...
It looks like a lousy year for amateur watching, with the best showers being washed out by a full Moon. 2007 will be better.

Answer 4

A shooting star is usally a small meteor from an asteroid or comet that you see falling from space. I believe stars are really made up of gas and burn out instead of falling to earth. But There is no harm in leting the children beleive that it's really a star falling from the sky and you should make a wish.

Answer 5

A shooting star, or meteor, is a piece of rock from space which burns up when it enters Earth's atmosphere. Some meteors reach the Earth's surface, these are called meteorites.

You can find more from this site.

Answer 6

often as we put more into space it will burn up when it falls back to Earth. 10%
Astroids from a belt between Eart and Mars 15%
Comet debrie from the tail of long past tails 70%
unknown 5%
I hope this is of some help, of course the more poetic may view the cosmic visitors as a spark for the imagineation of the dwellers of the night.
And the pragmatist would say about 50$ per gram depending on what it is made of.

Answer 7

A lump of rock that burns up in the upper athmosphere due to being heated up friction with air. And as for them being the size of a pea, let me ask you this, how much light is going to be produced by a lump of rock the size of a pea being burned up by an oxy/acetylene torch seen at a distanceof about 100 miles?

Answer 8

When you see a shooting star, it is usually a meteorite no bigger than a pea. Basically it disintegrates entering the atmosphere. Basically solid matter going into the 4th phase of matter, plasma.

Answer 9

Shooting stars are just meteorites,that is parts of planets,comets,
asteroids,etc.They burn when they enter the earth's atmosphere
hence giving out a light which gives them their name.

Answer 10

meteors burning up as they skim the atmosphere. They burn up before they reach the ground. The tails are the gases etc. that come off as the meteor goes through the atmosphere.