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A meteor or shooting star [8] is the visible passage of a meteoroid, comet, or asteroid entering Earth's atmosphere. At a speed typically in excess of 20 km/s (72,000 km/h; 45,000 mph), aerodynamic heating of that object produces a streak of light, both from the glowing object and the trail of glowing particles that it leaves in its wake.
Meteoritics [note 1] is the science that deals with meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. [note 2] [2] [3] It is closely connected to cosmochemistry, mineralogy and geochemistry. A specialist who studies meteoritics is known as a meteoriticist. [4]
Frederic Edwin Church, The Meteor of 1860. In 2010, it was determined to be an Earth-grazing meteor procession. [1] An Earth-grazing fireball (or Earth grazer) [2] is a fireball, a very bright meteor that enters Earth’s atmosphere and leaves again. Some fragments may impact Earth as meteorites, if
Meteorite classification may indicate that a "genetic" relationship exists between similar meteorite specimens. Similarly classified meteorites may share a common origin, and therefore may come from the same astronomical object (such as a planet, asteroid, or moon) known as a parent body. However, with current scientific knowledge, these types ...
The dominance of carbonaceous chondrite-like MMs and their low abundance in meteorite collections suggests that most MMs derive from sources different from those of most meteorites. Since most meteorites derive from asteroids, an alternative source for MMs might be comets. The idea that MMs might originate from comets originated in 1950. [4]
Those resulting fireballs, better known as "shooting stars," are meteors. If meteoroids survive their trip to Earth without burning up in the atmosphere, they are called meteorites, NASA says.
The legendary Chinguetti meteorite is also supposed to be a mesosiderite. The asteroid 16 Psyche is a candidate for the parent body of the mesosiderites. [5] However, a reliable delivery mechanism lacks for Psyche, and spectral analysis indicates the mesosiderites derive from the Maria Asteroid Family [6]
In April 2017, the IAU adopted a revised definition that generally limits meteoroids to a size between 30 μm and 1 m in diameter, but permits the use of the term for any object of any size that caused a meteor, thus leaving the distinction between asteroid and meteoroid blurred.