why are meteors called shooting star?
Answers
Answer:
Meteors are streaks of light, usually lasting just a few seconds, which people occasionally see in the night sky. They are sometimes called "shooting stars" or "falling stars", though they are not stars at all. Meteors are caused by the entry of small pieces of rock, dust, or metal from space into the atmosphere at extremely high speeds. These particles, called "meteoroids" when they are floating around in space (think of very small asteroids), are traveling at incredible speeds of tens of kilometers per second (tens of thousands of miles per hour) when they streak into the atmosphere. The incredible pressure meteoroids experience when they collide with Earth's atmosphere shatters them, transferring energy to atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, which then release the energy by glowing. This glow produces the bright trails of light in the sky we see as meteors.
Hope this helps!
Answer:
The sand-sized grains of dust sometimes slam into the thin air that surrounds the Earth, called the atmosphere, where they get hot very quickly. As the dust grains burn up, they leave bright streaks of light across the night sky. These streaks are called meteors, often nicknamed 'shooting stars' or 'falling stars