A shooting star is another name for a meteoroid that burns up as it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere. So, a shooting star isn’t a star at all.

Most of the shooting stars that we can see are known as meteoroids. These are objects as small as a piece of sand, and as large as a boulder. Smaller than a piece of sand, and astronomers call them interplanetary dust. If they’re larger than a boulder, astronomers call them asteroids.

A meteoroid becomes a meteor when it strikes the atmosphere and leaves a bright tail behind it. The bright line that we see in the sky is caused by the ram pressure of the meteoroid. It’s not actually caused by friction, as most people think.

When a meteoroid is larger, the streak in the sky is called a fireball or bolide. These can be bright, and leave a streak in the sky that can last for more than a minute. Some are so large they even make crackling noises as they pass through the atmosphere.

If any portion of the meteoroid actually survives its passage through the atmosphere, astronomers call them meteorites.

Some of the brightest and most popular meteor showers are the Leonids, the Geminids, and the Perseids. With some of these showers, you can see more than one meteor (or shooting star) each minute.

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As­ter­oid 2008 TC3 has a hum­drum name but an unusual dis­tinc­tion: it’s the first space rock to have been spot­ted be­fore it made a fiery ren­dez­vous with our plan­et, as­tro­no­mers say.

It streaked in­to the skies over north­ern Su­dan in the early morn­ing of Oct. 7, then burst at a high 37 km (23 miles) over the Nu­bi­an Des­ert. It was thought to have fully dis­in­te­grat­ed in­to dust. But a me­te­or as­tron­o­mer with the Moun­tain View, Calif.-based SETI (Search for Ex­tra­ter­res­tri­al In­tel­li­gence) In­sti­tute, Pe­ter Jen­niskens, thought oth­er­wise.

Work­ing with phys­i­cist Mauwia Shad­dad of the Uni­ver­s­ity of Khar­toum, Su­dan, and stu­dents and staff from the uni­ver­s­ity, he col­lect­ed nearly 280 pieces of the as­ter­oid, strewn over miles of des­ert. Nev­er be­fore had me­te­orites been col­lect­ed from such a high-altitude ex­plo­sion, ac­cord­ing to as­tro­no­mers.

As it turns out, the as­sem­bled rem­nants are un­like an­y­thing in our me­te­orite col­lec­tions, and may be an im­por­tant clue in un­rav­el­ing the early his­to­ry of the so­lar sys­tem, said Jen­niskens. “This was an ex­tra­or­di­nary op­por­tun­ity, for the first time, to br­ing in­to the lab ac­tu­al pieces of an as­ter­oid we had seen in space,” said Jen­niskens, lead au­thor on an ar­ti­cle in the cur­rent issue of the research jour­nal Na­ture on the anal­y­sis.

Pick­ed up by Ari­zon­a’s Catalina Sky Sur­vey tel­e­scope on Oct. 6, the truck-sized as­ter­oid ab­ruptly ended its 4.5 bil­lion year so­lar sys­tem od­ys­sey only 20 hours af­ter disco­very, when it broke apart in the Af­ri­can skies. The in­com­ing rock was tracked by sev­er­al groups of as­tro­no­mers, in­clud­ing a team at the La Pal­ma Ob­serv­a­to­ry in the Ca­nary Is­lands that was able to meas­ure sun­light re­flected by the ob­ject.

Stud­y­ing the re­flected sun­light gives clues to the min­er­als at the sur­face of these ob­jects. As­tro­no­mers group the as­ter­oids in­to clas­ses, and at­tempt to as­sign me­te­orite types to each class. But their abil­ity to do this is of­ten frus­trat­ed by dust on the as­ter­oids.

Jen­niskens and the SETI In­sti­tute’s Jan­ice Bish­op meas­ured the re­flec­tion prop­er­ties of the me­te­orite. The pair found that both the as­ter­oid and its me­te­oritic re­mains re­flected light in much the same way, si­m­i­lar to the known be­hav­ior of so-called F-class as­ter­oids.

“F-class as­ter­oids were long a mys­tery,” Bish­op not­ed, as as­tro­no­mers had nev­er been able to ac­tu­ally hold a spec­i­men. “The good cor­re­spond­ence be­tween tel­e­scop­ic and lab­o­r­a­to­ry meas­urements for 2008 TC3 sug­gests that small as­ter­oids don’t have the trou­ble­some dust lay­ers, and may there­fore be more suita­ble ob­jects for es­tab­lish­ing the link be­tween as­ter­oid type and me­te­orite prop­er­ties,” he added. “That would al­low us to char­ac­ter­ize as­ter­oids from afar.”

“2008 TC3 could serve as a Ro­set­ta Stone, pro­vid­ing us with es­sen­tial clues to the pro­cesses that built Earth and its plan­etary sib­lings,” said Rocco Mancinelli, a mi­cro­bi­al ecolo­g­ist at the in­sti­tute and mem­ber of the re­search team. “In the dim past, as the so­lar sys­tem was tak­ing shape, small dust par­t­i­cles stuck to­geth­er to form larg­er bod­ies, a pro­cess of ac­cu­mula­t­ion that even­tu­ally pro­duced the as­ter­oids. Some of these bod­ies col­lid­ed so vi­o­lently that they melted through­out.”

2008 TC3 is an in­ter­me­diate case, hav­ing been only par­tially melted, ac­cord­ing to re­search­ers. The re­sult­ing ma­te­ri­al pro­duced what’s called a polymict ure­ilite me­te­orite.

Know­ing the na­ture of F-class as­ter­oids could con­ceivably pay off in pro­tect­ing Earth from dan­ger­ous im­pactors, re­search­ers said. That 2008 TC3 blew up very soon af­ter hit­ting the at­mos­phere in­di­cates it was frag­ile. It weighed an es­ti­mat­ed 80 tons, of which only some 5 kg (11 lb.) has been reco­vered. If at some fu­ture time we disco­ver an F-class as­ter­oid that’s, say, sev­er­al kilo­me­ters or miles wide—one that could wipe out species—then we’ll know its make­up and can de­vise ways to ward it off. Hit­ting such a frag­ile as­ter­oid with an atom­ic bom­b, as Bruce Wil­lis did in the 1998 mov­ie Ar­ma­ged­don, would merely turn it in­to a deadly swarm of shot­gun pel­lets.

Roy Rogers