Meteors
If you look up at the sky on a clear night, every now and again you may be lucky enough to see a shooting star. These appear as sudden streaks of light that travel across the sky. Most last for no more than a second. These shooting stars are in fact meteors, tiny bits of rock from space, only a hair's width in size, which burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, at about 60 km above the Earth's surface. When meteors hit the atmosphere they are travelling 50 times faster than Concorde, and friction with air causes them to heat up rapidly and burn away.
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• American Meteor Society
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