Really. What is a shooting star?

Question

Really. What is a shooting star?

Answer 1

its a small chunk of a meteor that enters earths atmosphere and burns up. what you see is the trail of gas as it ignites

Answer 2

A shooting star is any meteroid traveling through space, visible with or without a telescope.  The trail the shooting star is what makes it so infamour.  Made of ice and bits of rock torn from the meteroid due to friction it can seen from many miles away.

Answer 3

it's the visible part of the path of a meteoroid that's entered that atmosphere, usually coming from pieces of meteors that have broken apart in space. it burns up in the atmosphere so it's kinda short-lived.

Answer 4

a shooting star is what some call a meteor,and it is the luminous trail left by a particle of dust or piece of rock from space that enters earths upper atmosphere.and burns up do to  friction.on average the earth sweeps up 200 million kilograms of meteoric material in the course of one year.the brighter ones you see are cased by bigger particles.making the brightest ones the size of a fist,and ones of this nature can be so bright that it leaves a trail behind it,that could last for several seconds.these are known as fireballs.kind of a cheesy name if you ask me.and the ones to faint to be see,are usually examined by radio telescopes with radar,and they can be observed by the gases they ionize on there way in to the atmosphere......i hoped that helped a little...and by the way,what a great question!!!