Do shooting stars really exist?

Question

The other day, I was sitting outside of my house on the porch around 10 pm. I was looking up and the night sky was very clear so the stars were very visible. Minutes passed and I noticed something fly across the sky at a rapid speed (hehe I thought it was a shooting star so I wished for something) and after about 2 minutes another thing passed across the sky and slowly vanished. Now, I’m not even certain if shooting stars exist but I know that it’s not an actual star firing across =)
Are they just asteroids or meteoroids that sometimes fly across the night sky?
Do you science people have any knowledge on what these “things” are that sometimes people observe flying across the sky and could they be of any danger to us?

Thanks for your answer =)

Answer 1

They're small rocks entering the Earth's atmosphere. These rocks are travelling so fast that as soon as they hit the air on our planet, air friction causes them to burn. Almost all of these rocks burn up before they hit the surface of the Earth, and what you see as a shooting star is the rock burning. Usually, the bigger "fireball" is, the bigger the rock is.

Answer 2

'Shooting star' sounds like something very fast, or very exotic.

Both of these assumptions are untrue.

The 'observed' speed of a meteor depends on the angle at which it hits the atmosphere. If it is travelling directly towards you when it starts to burn, it will seem to move slowly. If it's big, it will burn (glowing, like a star) for longer. Very few are big enough to survive their journey through the whole atmosphere. Even fewer are coming straight down (at a right angle to the ground, so that there is very little depth of air in the way), which gives them the best chance of making it.

So there are vastly more meteors (things burning as they pass through the atmosphere) than meteorites (rocks that passed through the atmosphere, and landed on the ground).

A slowly moving object which seems to shine, and fades gradually, can also be a satellite. This will gleam when its 'solar array' (the panels that generate electricity) reflect sunlight towards you, like the spot reflected from the face of a wrist-watch. The panels are not always set up to follow the sun, and as they rotate, the light they reflect will sometimes shine towards you (so you see a 'glow) and sometimes somewhere else (so it's invisible to you).

Sometimes, meteors seem very rare, and you can spend a long time looking up without seeing one. There are two regular meteor events, when 'showers' of shooting stars can be easily seen. These are called 'The Leonid Shower' and 'The Perseid Shower'. Other 'shower' events also exist, but are less spectacular.

A very small number of people have been killed by a meteor falling to earth (one absolutely certain case, others arguable).
Some astrophysicists and astronomers have warned that there is a danger to humanity from large objects that might fall (and some have been recorded previously: try googling 'Tunguska'). These ideas have often been used as the main plot device in science fiction books and films (such as the recent 'armageddon').

NASA and other agencies have departments that track 'near earth objects' which might hit the planet. There are always concerns about how effective their procedures are; mostly these arguments happen when the funding is being reviewed.

There are also departments tracking man-made objects; 'lost', damaged or obsolete satellites, and debris from space-flights. There are many thousands of operating satellites, and millions of bits of 'junk', orbiting outside the atmosphere. These could also be dangerous if they came down. Skylab was supposed to land harmlessly in the Pacific Ocean, but some of it hit Australia.

Answer 3

No need to repeat about the fact of pieces of space debris, rock and such burning up in the earth's atmosphere as they hurtle groundwards. Not only rocks and stuff from space but the odd satellite or other piece of man made space litter can burn up on entry into the atmosphere.

However, to strictly answer your question "do shooting stars really exist" the answer has to be that the very event of a shooting star normally represents is destruction. A few shooting stars are large enough to impact on the ground and that is where we can get impact craters. August is a good month for sightings especially in the clear sky regions.

Answer 4

A shooting star is a piece of material that can be as small as a piece of dust to the size of a house (or 2 Luckily a shooting star the size of house hardly ever hit the earth!) But shooting stars are 90% of the time somthing arround the size of a piece of dust or a small stone, and the glowing trail that you see in the sky is the partical burning up in the atmospher of the earth because they are travelling at 1000's of miles per hour and the friction just burns them away.

Answer 5

what you observed could have been satellites passing over and still being lit up by the sun, since you saw them passing for some time and slowly vanished

meteorits often appear and disapear in less than a second
and before you really see them they burned up.

Larger meteroids normally burn up too, but you see some more spectacular burning along with that, and those often sperate into multiple parts while plunging into the atmosphere.

As far as i know earth is peppered by something like 40 metric tons of such debris each day. And just 1 meteorite every 5 years is in some local news for having hit something on the ground which was of some worth.

the next larger category of stuff which could possibly hit us are asteroids in various sizes, but those are being tracked with both optical and radar observations.
Its believed that about every 300.000 years or so some larger dodo hit somewhere, causing craters you might know from Arizona. but nowadays .. well
i won't start worrying .. this planet alreday made it 4.5 billion years and was hit several times, and we still exist :)

Answer 6

They exist in name. They are really meteors. Small fragments of dust or debris, sometimes left by comet passes, sometimes not.
I would like to clear a couple of misconceptions up though.
Firstly, when these particles are in space they are meteoroids, as they burn up in our atmosphere they are meteors and only if they land do they become meteorites.
Secondly, it is NOT friction that causes them to burn. Try putting your thumb on the end of a bicycle pump and then pumping hard. The air will feel very hot. This is called ram pressure. Meteors travel so fast that the air in front of them becomes compressed as it can't get out of the way fast enough. THAT is what causes them to heat up and burn.

Answer 7

They definitely exist. They're meteors coming into contact with the earth's atmosphere. The heat from the contact with the atmosphere causes them to burn up, showing a bright light.

Sometimes there are meteor 'storms' forecast, and if you can get to an area with minimal light pollution (think countryside) then you can watch the most beautiful displays of light streaking across the night sky.

Answer 8

They are debris falling through the earth's atmosphere and burning up with the heat caused by friction.Another name for a shooting star is a meteor.If it's big enough it will not be completely burned up and will land on earth.Only then is it called a meteorite. Some have been known to damage cars.

Answer 9

You should have probably seen a shooting star in the sky,but sometimes it may be a satellite that passed through the sky.

Answer 10

Yes, they are meteors. They are caused by meteoroids hitting the earth's atmosphere at a very high speed. They are quite common, but the really bright, long lasting "fireballs" are relatively rare.

Most of the ones you see are from very small particles, usually no larger than a pea. The fireballs may be from the size of your fist and larger. I saw one in broad daylight, once.