the.com/meteor shower
Space debris cremating itself in your atmosphere, and you call it romantic.
means A flurry of meteors seeming to radiate from one point in the sky, caused by Earth passing through a trail of comet debris that burns up in the atmosphere.
from 'Meteor' traces back to Greek 'meteōros,' meaning 'lofty' or 'suspended in the air' — it originally described any atmospheric phenomenon (wind, rain, shooting stars alike), before narrowing to just the streaking lights. 'Shower' is the plain old English word for a scattered fall of something — rain, hail, or sparks — borrowed here because the debris doesn't arrive as one event but as a rain of many small ones.
- actual size
- most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand
- the cause
- earth plowing through a comet's leftover litter
- best viewing
- away from cities, after midnight, patience required
- speed
- burn up at tens of thousands of mph