Disney writers and most other people do not realize that when they see a shooting
star and wish on it, they actually silently speak to a chunk of ice, dirt or space waste
entering the Earth's atmosphere. Meteors, the scientific term for shooting stars, occur
more frequently several times during the year. On any clear night, a person might observe
an average of about three meteors per hour. At certain times of the year, however, the
Earth passes through the debris left behind from a comet. These trails consist of many
fragments broken off of asteroids, space crafts, and even planets. Three important subjects
of meteors include their composition, journey, and history.
Contrary to what some people grow up thinking, a shooting star is not a star at all.
Composed of many different materials, meteors flake off of asteroids and are sometimes
pieces of planets that meteorites deeply impacted, sending little pieces out into space. The
three main types of meteors are composed of Iron, Earth's crust and Stony. Iron meteors
consist mostly of iron, hence the name, and also include small amounts of nickel and
cobalt. Comprised of oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium and
magnesium, Earth's crust meteors resemble most chunks of rock and gravel that occur
naturally here on earth. Stony meteors, made of oxygen, iron, silicon, magnesium,
aluminum, nickel and calcium, share many of the same characteristics of the materials on
earth that would be referred to as stones. The way in which astronomers named these
types is not ambiguous. Meteor types receive their names for their compositions.
A baseball flying through the air at 30,000 mph somewhat simulates a meteor
entering the atmosphere. Why do these pieces of junk look so brilliant in the night sky?
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