Most people think a shooting star is just that; a star, but it’s actually a streak of light from a bit of meteor dust burning up in the atmosphere — usually from a particle no bigger than a grain of sand

A shooting star is not a star. It is a meteor: the brief streak of light you see when a tiny piece of rock or dust from space slams into the top of Earth’s atmosphere and starts to glow. The name has stuck for centuries, but nothing is falling, and no star is involved. The […]