What are meteors?

Meteors are like tiny rocks from space that light up the sky when they zoom through the air.

Imagine you're playing catch with a friend in your backyard. You throw a ball really fast, and it zips through the air, whoosh! That’s kind of what happens with meteors. They’re tiny rocks that come from far away, like from another planet or even from the moon. When they enter Earth's atmosphere, they go super fast, and the air around them gets really hot, so hot that they start to glow, making a bright streak in the sky.

Think of it like riding your bike down a steep hill without pedaling, you pick up speed! Meteors are like those speeding rocks. As they go faster and faster through the air, they heat up, and that’s why we see them glowing. Sometimes they’re so bright that they look like little fireballs!

If the meteor keeps going all the way down to Earth, it becomes a meteorite, which is just a fancy name for a rock from space that lands on our planet. But until then, it's just a fun, glowing visitor in the sky!