ABSTRACT
Meteors are cometary debris. As a comet moves along, it leaves a dusty "trail" behind it, and when the Earth passes through such a trail it collects a large number of particles, each around tbe size of a grain of sand. When a particle dashes into the upper air, moving at anything up to 45 rniJes (72 km) per second, so much heat is caused by friction against the atmosphere that the particle burns away, producing the streak of raillance which we term a shooting-star. What we see, of course, is not the particle itself, but the effects it produces in the upper atmosphere during its headJong plunge to destruction.
