METEORS: “SHOOTING STARS”
Reading edition
What are popularly known as “shooting stars” are not stars at all; they are really meteors which appear at altitudes of from 60 to 100 miles, as a rule, from the earth, and move over paths of 40 or 50 miles at a rate of from 10 to 50 miles per second.
The light given out by meteors is due to their being heated by friction with the atmosphere. Falling from space, they become attracted by the earth’s gravitation, and fall towards it. Here they encounter the earth’s atmosphere, and their rapid passage through it creates terrific heat, which tends to consume them before they reach the face of the earth, turning them into gases, or causing them to fall gently as dust. This sudden flash is the “shooting star” in question.
The number of such meteors is very great. It has been computed that between ten and twenty million strike the earth’s atmosphere daily. Occasionally, a large number of meteors fall together; and then we have a “meteoric shower.”