It’s vacation time, we go to bed late. Tonight, you wanted to stay up to look at the night sky.

Suddenly, in the middle of the constellations, a trail of light appears. Oh, it’s already gone! Make a wish: it’s a shooting star.

But why did that star quickly shoot across the sky?

Because it’s not really a star at all!

Real stars, are enormous balls of superhot gas, like the sun. But they are so far away that they look really tiny.

A shooting star or meteor, is a light phenomenon caused by a small object from outer space entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

You know our planet’s surrounded by a layer of air: that’s how we can breathe.

When a rock drifting through space is attracted by the Earth, it crosses the atmosphere very quickly.