SHOOTING STARS
What we call a “shooting star” is not a star at all, but a meteor. These great showers that we see as pieces of metal or stone which, like the stars, are moving in groups in space and, unlike the stars, are dead and cold, giving out no light until something happens to them. As our Earth and its surrounding atmosphere moves round the sun some of these fragments (they range from specks to lumps weighing many tons) sweep into the atmosphere at speeds up to 50 miles a second. About 70 miles up above our heads the air is so dense that the meteor becomes white hot. and even the iron or stone it is made of burns. Generally it is burned out in a second, and we can just see the flash of light shooting across thesky. In August we can see showers of meteors at a time. Sometimes the meteor is so large that it is not burned up before it gets through the 70 miles or so of atmosphere, and reaches the Earth as a meteorite.
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Bibliographic details
Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 29 March 1938, Page 10
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182SHOOTING STARS Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 29 March 1938, Page 10
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