--- title: Meteors, meteorites and shooting stars — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Meteors, meteorites and shooting stars», a lesson of the space course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A shooting star is not a star at all: it is a grain of rock or dust, often smaller than a grain of sand, rushing into the Earth's air --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Space](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/) / Meteors, meteorites and shooting stars # Meteors, meteorites and shooting stars Lesson 16 of the space course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/0/) — A shooting star is not a star at all: it is a grain of rock or dust, often smaller than a grain of sand, rushing into the Earth's air so fast that it glows and burns up. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/1/) — The same piece has three names: a meteoroid while it is in space, a meteor while it glows in the air, and a meteorite if any of it lands on the ground. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/2/) — Rub your hands together hard and they get warm: a meteor hits the air at tens of kilometres every second, far faster than a bullet, and the air in front of it is squashed so hard it glows. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/3/) — Meteor showers come on about the same dates each year when the Earth passes through a dust trail, and all their meteors seem to fly out of one point, the radiant. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/4/) — Big impacts are rare but real: one blasted out Meteor Crater in Arizona, and a far bigger one about 66 million years ago helped end the non-bird dinosaurs. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/5/) — A shooting star is not a star at all but a tiny grain of rock or dust, often smaller than a grain of sand, burning up as it rushes into the Earth's air. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/6/) — A piece of space rock is a meteoroid while in space, a meteor while it glows in the air, and a meteorite if any of it lands on the ground. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/7/) — Meteors enter the air at between about 11 and 72 kilometres per second, many times faster than a bullet. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/8/) — Most meteors glow and burn out between about 70 and 120 kilometres up, far above aeroplanes and clouds. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/9/) — Meteor showers happen on about the same dates each year when the Earth passes through a trail of dust left by a comet, such as the Perseids around 12 August from comet Swift-Tuttle. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/10/) — The Geminids, peaking around 13 to 14 December, are one of the richest showers of the year and come from an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon rather than a comet. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/11/) — The meteors of a shower seem to fly out from one point in the sky, called the radiant, though they can streak across any part of the sky, and the shower is named after the constellation, the named star pattern, where that point lies. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/12/) — A fireball is a meteor brighter than the planet Venus, made by a larger lump, and it can sometimes break up with a boom heard on the ground. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/13/) — In February 2021 a meteorite fell on a driveway in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, and was picked up within hours, one of the freshest carbon-rich meteorites ever found. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/14/) — Most meteorites are chips of asteroids from the belt between Mars and Jupiter. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/15/) — A few hundred known meteorites were blasted off the Moon or Mars. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/16/) — Meteor Crater in Arizona, about 1.2 kilometres wide, was blasted out roughly 50,000 years ago. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/16-meteors-meteorites-and-shooting-stars/17/) — An impact about 66 million years ago helped end the age of the non-bird dinosaurs. - ← previous: [Pluto, the Kuiper belt, the Oort cloud and comets](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/15-pluto-the-kuiper-belt-the-oort-cloud-and-comets/) - next →: [Stars: what they are](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/17-stars-what-they-are/) - ↑ back to [Space](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/)