Small shooting stars are called micrometeoroids or cosmic dust grains: these tiny pieces of matter will inevitably burn up and never reach the surface of Earth for impact. Meteors can be the size of a piece of dust, to the size of a human fist, to the size of a small house. The sizes of shooting stars vary, but they all become significantly smaller as they fall through the atmosphere. We associate glowing in the sky with stars, so a burning meteor seems like a star moving across the sky. The streak of light allows us to see the meteor fall or ‘shoot’ across the sky. Shooting star seems logical as a descriptor because viewers see the streak of light produced as a meteor falls through the atmosphere. The term “shooting star” is more common than saying “meteor.” The term meteor comes from the Latin meteora, which means ‘phenomena in the heavens.’ The meteors that survive are much smaller when they hit the ground because they burned during their fall. The larger meteors that survive the atmospheric friction hit the Earth’s surface and become meteorites.

Very small meteors burn up or vaporize before they can even hit the Earth’s surface. The friction causes the surface of the small piece of matter to burn up, which is called ablation. The speed of the fall against the gasses of the atmosphere creates intense friction. Once these small pieces of matter enter the Earth’s atmosphere, the meteor falls at a high velocity. Meteors are very small pieces of matter, so they cannot be classified as comets or asteroids. However, some pieces of rock were already on a direct course to impact Earth. Some pieces of matter pass near Earth and get caught by Earth’s gravitational field. There are many pieces of matter, such as rock or dust, floating through space. To be a meteor or shooting star, the piece of matter must enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Essentially, meteorites are meteors that survive their fall through the Earth’s atmosphere. Meteors are pieces of matter that burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere and therefore do not hit the ground.

The difference between the two is that a meteorite is a piece of matter, usually rock, that passes through the Earth’s atmosphere and hits its surface. It is important to understand the difference between the term meteor and meteorite.

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