The beauty of a shooting star crossing the night sky is undeniable, but while for some people this is very romantic, for others it just suggests a bad omen. The understanding of the shooting star in different parts of the world implies diverse meanings associated with old beliefs sometimes. Thus, westerners often make a wish when they see a falling star, while in other traditions, any shooting star represents a sign that someone has passed away. Yet, although we give all sorts of explanations to such sky events, they have a very reasonable and easy to understand scientific background. The fact is that we incorrectly call it a shooting star, as the thing in itself has nothing of the attributes of a real star.

Shooting Star

A shooting star is a meteoroid, or some other boulder-sized debris form that falls on Earth and gets on fire at the entrance in the atmosphere. The friction of the air masses, the ram pressure and the presence of the  oxygen associated with the incredible speed of the meteoroid cause the resemblance with a star. Thus, the combustion of the shooting star is complete before reaching the surface of the planet. Big-sized meteoroids may not burn completely and they fall on the ground causing crater formations. This time they are called meteors.

Shooting Star

The light specter as well as the trajectory of the shooting star allow scientists to speculate on the structure or chemical composition of the falling body. Though observable with the naked eye on the dark night sky only, meteoroids and meteors also fall during the day, but this time they can be identified only by radio signals, with the sunlight preventing their observation otherwise. Thus, scientists have concluded that a shooting star can be light and fragile like a snowball or heavy and dense because of the hard metal core. A special kind of shooting star here is the one that passes through an atmosphere sector and gets out into space again to continue its speedy course.

Shooting Star

A very bright shooting star is called a fireball and the measurements result from comparing the light intensity of the meteor with the light normally reflected by a planet. As beautiful as it may look, a shooting star can often cause great damage on Earth’s surface if it is not totally burned during the flight through the atmosphere. Past collisions were devastating for ecosystems, with great flora and fauna damage; should such a shooting star fall in a city, the effect would be that of a bomb dropping, with the intensity of the explosion varying according to the size of the meteorite.