shooting stars

a "falling star" or a "shooting star" has nothing at all to do with a star! these amazing streaks of light you can sometimes see in the night sky are caused by tiny bits of dust and rock called meteoroids falling into the earth's atmosphere and burning up. the short-lived trail of light the burning meteoroid produces is called a meteor.

meteors are commonly called falling stars or shooting stars. if any part of the meteoroid survives burning up and actually hits the earth, that remaining bit is then called a meteorite.

at certain times of year, you are likely to see a great number of meteors in the night sky. these events are called meteor showers and they occur when the earth passes through the trail of debris left by a comet as it orbits the sun.

now that i am older and understand this natural phenomenon, it helps to solve a lot of mysteries that troubled me in my teenage years. i was baffled by these streaks of light that i used to see over the sky when i was at the jewish cemetery near my house. believing the older folks, i was told that these streaks were 'ghost lights' or 'gases' that emitted from the corpses buried in the earth.

when i was older and i went camping at pulau ubin, we stayed up at night to watch the meteor showers in the ubin sky.