The word meteor is derived from the Greek meteron, meaning something high up. Today, however, the term is used to describe the light phenomena produced by the entry of a meteoroid into Earth's atmosphere. A meteoroid is defined to be any solid object moving in interplanetary space that is much larger than an atom or a molecule, but smaller than a few meters in diameter. A visual meteor, or shooting star, is produced whenever a meteoroid is vaporized in Earth's upper atmosphere. If a meteoroid survives its passage through the atmosphere without being fully vaporized and falls to the ground, it is a called a meteorite.

Upon entering Earth's upper atmosphere, a meteoroid begins to collide with an ever-increasing number of air molecules. These collisions will both slow the meteoroid down and heat its surface layers. At the same time the meteoroid is being...