Meterite

S.V

Definition:   A bright trail or streak that appears in the sky when a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by friction with the earth’s atmosphere. It is also called falling star, meteor burst, or a shooting star.

What does it do/What happens: A meteor happens in the sky when meteoroid enters the earth atmosphere. It is as if it is a visible light strike. They occur on a daily basis and are usually caused by meteoroid that is no bigger than a pebble. A meteor happens in showers, which arise when the Earth passes through a trail of debris left by a comet, or a “random” or a “sporadic” meteors. The different between a meteorite and a meteoroid is that a meteoroid is a rock the size of a grain of sand to that of a boulder that is in our solar system.

If this rock is caught in earth’s gravitation well and enters it, it is a meteor, and as it falls it burns. If this space rock survives the trip to the ground it is called a meteorite. A meteoroid is also a sand-to boulder sized particle of debris in the solar system. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth’s (or another body’s) atmosphere is called is called a meteor, or colloquially a shooting star.

“Meteor”  www.thefreedictionary.com   free dictionary 2010
“Meteor”  www.answer.ask.com  Answer corporation 2010
“Meteor”  wiki.answer.com  Answer corporation  2010