• Question: what are shooting stars made of and how do they occur?

    Asked by 11fmarumbwa to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Shooting stars aren’t actually starts at all. If stars started moving about like that we’d be in a lot of trouble. Imagine if the sun just decided to up and move.

      Shooting stars are actuallty meteors that enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. If a Meteor reaches the Earths surface it is called a meteorite. These metors can be anything from snow-ball like clumps of ice to metal rich rocks and anything inbetween.

    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 22 Jun 2013:

      Shooting stars are solid objects moving through space. As Sam says, like metals or balls of ice.

      The tail we see is caused by pressure building up in front of the shooting star and heating up the air around it to immense temperatures. This is enough to ionise particles in the shooting star and make them interact with the surrounding air, producing the beautiful glowing tail we see.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 23 Jun 2013:

      Shooting Stars are bits of either meteors or comets burning up in the earths atmosphere – they are made of water & dust (if they come from a comet) or rock or metal (if they come from a meteor).

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