What is a shooting star ? The science of shooting stars

First, let's be clear about what a shooting star is not: it is not a star.

Of course, from our vantage point on Earth, it might look like a star that broke away from its natural place in the cosmos and flew randomly through space: hence the name.

But that's not actually what a shooting star is.

Stars are huge blobs of burning gas – and they are very, very far away.

The closest to Earth is of course our own Sun, which is just over 150 million miles away.

After that, you look at Proxima Centauri, which is about 40 trillion miles from Earth.

What causes a shooting star

Shooting stars, on the other hand, are meteors: small solid objects that are usually found less than 100 km above the Earth's surface.

They occur when a small fragment of rock or dust – a meteoroid – enters the Earth's atmosphere.

High-speed rubbing against gaseous molecules in the atmosphere causes friction that heats the object to very high temperatures, causing it to glow in the night sky and leave a trail in its wake.

Our meteoroid is now a meteor, or “shooting star”.

If the original object is large enough to survive this combustion process upon entry, any fragment of it that eventually lands on the Earth's surface would be a meteorite.

So this is what a shooting star is: a small piece of rock that burns as it enters the Earth's atmosphere.

It's not a star and, at the risk of upsetting Italian toy makers, it's also not a magical omen that can be used to turn your new wooden puppet into a real boy.

Shooting stars are often considered lucky, but of course there is no scientific basis to suggest that they cause luck.

And what we could describe as “luck” doesn’t exist either.

When to see a shooting star

Meteors/shooting stars can appear anywhere in the night sky at any time, but the best time to see one is during one of the annual meteor showers that occur whenever Earth's orbit takes her through the strip of debris left by Earth's path. a comet (and sometimes an asteroid).

You can learn more about this in our guide to what causes a meteor shower.

Some of the largest and most spectacular meteor showers include the Quadrantids in January, the Perseids in August, the Orionids in October, the Leonids in November, and the Geminids and Perseids in December.

The number of shooting stars you might see per hour is described by the “zenith hourly rate,” which indicates how many you are likely to see during a meteor shower under perfect conditions.

During the Perseid meteor shower, for example, the rate could be 25 shooting stars visible from a suburb per hour.

During other meteor showers, you'll see far fewer.