meteor
Sign in to savethumb|250px|Meteor seen from the site of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)
AI overview
A meteor is a bright streak of light that appears in the sky when a small piece of rock or dust from space enters Earth's atmosphere and burns up from friction. Meteors are worth noticing because they're visible signs of the cosmic material constantly traveling through space, and occasionally larger meteors can reach Earth's surface as meteorites.
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Article
11 sectionsContents
- History
- Fireball
- Effect on atmosphere
- Colours
- Acoustic manifestations
- Meteor shower
- Notable meteors
- Monitoring
- Gallery
- See also
- References
thumb|250px|Meteor seen from the site of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)
A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a streak of light via its rapid motion and sometimes also by shedding glowing material in its wake. Meteors typically occur in the mesosphere at altitudes from . The root word meteor comes from the Greek μετεωρίτης (meteōrítēs), meaning "high in the air".