Hey, Stargazers!

Have you ever wished upon a shooting star?

Well, what if I told you that's not actually a star you're wishing upon.

It's something else and in fact, a shooting star also known as a falling star has nothing to do with stars at all.

This beautiful phenomenon in the night sky is really just caused by tiny bits of dust and rock falling into the Earth's atmosphere and burning up.

This burning light across the sky is what we would call a meteor.

These meteors can enter Earth's atmosphere falling as fast as 44 miles per second.

That's the equivalent of over like 160,000 miles an hour and the faster and larger the meteor, the brighter and longer it's gonna glow.

Most burn up, but if a bit of space rock does make it through the atmosphere and hit the surface, that's called a meteorite.

If you could track that meteorite's exact position, you could go find a falling star.

So next time you want to make a wish on a shooting star, maybe you should think of it as like wishing upon a falling meteor, but you know that doesn't really sound as fun as wishing on a shooting star.

We'll see you next time on Star Gazers.

Keep looking up!