or shooting stars, occur when the Earth passes through debris fields left by passing comets.
What we are witnessing, when we see a shooting-star, is a small piece of interplanetary matter, called a meteor, entering the Earth’s atmosphere and ‘burning up’ at a height of about 100 km. While most look bright white, some can appear blue, green, yellow, orange, or red.
Some may even explode at the end of its visible flight. Most showers produce about 20 meteors per hour but there are showers which can produce hundreds of meteors over a period of less than an hour. Such shows are, unfortunately, very rare. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which they appear to radiate and can happen any month throughout the year.
(Source for this story
Total Escape)
