• Question: How can a normal star become a shooting star?

    Asked by lsandler to Alan on 10 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      It can’t, they are two different things.

      Normal stars are like our Sun, but so far away they look like faint dots of light.

      A shooting star starts as a microscopic piece of rock going around our Sun. If it enters our atmosphere, it is travelling so fast that friction with the air burns it up in a flash of light.

      Most people call that flash of light a shooting star, but the proper scientific name is a meteor.

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