A shooting star is not really a star at all. It's a tiny piece of dust or rock that enters the Earth's atmosphere at high speed and burns up, creating a bright streak of light in the sky.
These are also called meteors, and they can happen any time of the year.
Sometimes you can see a lot of them in one night, especially during a meteor shower, which is when the Earth passes through the trail of debris left by a comet.
Some of the most famous meteor showers are the Perseids in August and the Geminids in December.
Now, a falling star is also not a star, but it's a bit different from a shooting star.
A falling star is a meteor that survives its journey through the atmosphere and lands on the ground.
These are also called meteorites, and they are very rare. Most meteors are too small to make it to the surface, and they vaporize completely in the air.
This gargantuan meteorite is currently the largest known “falling star”. Called the Hoba. It is nearly 60 tons and has never been moved. It has been estimated to have landed on Earth 80,000 years ago.
But some of them are big enough or dense enough to reach the Earth, and they can cause craters or damage when they hit.
Some of the most famous meteorites are the Hoba meteorite in Namibia, which weighs about 60 tons, and the Chelyabinsk meteorite in Russia, which exploded in the air in 2013 and injured over 1,000 people.
Chelyabinsk meteorite
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