There is something very peculiar about watching a shooting star,

as the effect it has on people greatly varies from individual to individual and from culture to culture. The understanding of the shooting star in different parts of the world is both varied and suggestive. Thus, westerners often make a wish when they see a falling star, while in other traditions, any shooting star tells people that someone dies. Yet, although we give all sorts of explanations to such sky events, they have a very reasonable and easy to understand scientific background. The fact is that we incorrectly call it a shooting star, as the thing in itself has nothing of the attributes of a real star.

A shooting star is a meteoroid, or some other boulder-sized debris form that enters Earth's atmosphere and gets on fire. The friction of the air masses, the ram pressure and the presence of the oxygen associated with the incredible speed of the meteoroid cause the star-like appearance. Thus, the combustion of the shooting star is complete before reaching the surface of the planet. Big-sized meteoroids may not burn completely and they fall on the ground causing crater formations. Such falling stars are known as meteors.

Scientists can identify the chemical structure of a shooting star by observing the light specter during the descent as well as the trajectory through the atmosphere. Though noticeable with the naked eye on the dark night sky only, meteoroids and meteors also fall during the day, but this time they are detected only by radio signals, with the sunlight preventing their observation otherwise. Thus, scientists have concluded that a shooting star can be light and fragile like a snowball or heavy and dense because of the hard metal core. A very unusual phenomenon is that of a shooting star that passes through just a sector of the atmosphere without burning completely before resuming its journey in outer space.

A very bright shooting star is called a fireball and the measurements result from comparing the light intensity of the meteor with that of a planet. As beautiful as it may look, a shooting star has a huge destructive potential if it is not totally burned during the flight through the atmosphere. Past collisions were devastating for ecosystems, with great flora and fauna damage; if such a shooting star fell in a city, the effect would be that of a bomb dropping, with a higher or lower destructive force depending on the size of the meteor.