Picture this: you and your family are out camping on a nice warm evening… Suddenly the sky is lit up with a dazzling shooting star. But can stars really shoot across the sky? Well the truth about shooting stars is about to be revealed.
What are shooting stars
Shooting stars are actually meteoroids travelling through outer space. Meteoroids are tiny pieces of stone or metallic debris, most of them are only about the size of a small stone. They travel around the sun in different paths and speeds. The shooting star effect we see on Earth is the meteorite being heated up from the friction of entering into the atmospheric gas of the Earth. This heat is so intense that it makes the meteors glow and this glow is what the naked eye sees in the sky as a ‘shooting star.’ Don’t worry because usually meteors burn up completely before even reaching the Earth! If they don’t
the remaining parts hit the Earth and are then called meteorites. If they don’t the remaining parts hit the Earth and are then called meteorites.
What are meteor showers?
To understand what a meteor shower is, you need to understand what a comet is. A comet is an object of the solar system that is made up of ice, dust and gas. The closer the comet gets to the sun, the ice within begins to melt, releasing the dust and the gas. This gets blown away by ‘solar winds,’ as they get blown away the dust and gas form what we see as the tail of a comet. Now, a meteor shower happens when Earth passes through the path (tail), the dust and gases emitted by the comet create streaks of light in the sky as they burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
On any given night, there are several small meteors shooting across the sky, but during a meteor shower, tens to hundreds of meteors can be seen per hour. All meteor showers can be predicted as they usually happen around the same time each year.
There you have it kids, the science behind shooting stars. If you want to read more about meteor showers and meteorites, get yourself of Supernova 2.6. Just remember that this issue is an archival magazine, so it may be harder to find!
Happy reading and stay curious!
