Shooting Stars : What, How and Why| Essay by Samriddha,10, Kolkata

Ah, what a satisfying view of the night sky. Hey wait… what is that beam of light? 

Have you also been lucky enough to spot a light striking past a sky full of stars? You are right. We call it a ‘shooting star’. But what is it? I am here to tell you all about it. 

                       There are billions and billions of stars, asteroids, meteors and other celestial bodies present all through the universe. There are different kinds of stars too. There are red dwarf stars, little yellow stars, giant yellow stars, red giant stars etc and the biggest of them all are the blue giant stars. These huge blue stars can only be seen in the night sky because they shine extremely bright and that makes their life span short by as much as 10,000 years. They are millions of light years away from us so they look tiny.

                       Now getting back to our topic, some meteors and asteroids also get into Earth. But for them we have a special layer of protection in our atmosphere. When these meteors or asteroids enter the upper atmosphere at high speed, they get completely burned making a glow as they pass. 

                         These burning debris that we see in the night sky are mistaken to be shooting stars as they are visible among the cluster of shining stars.

                       Hope this essay cleared all your questions about the shooting star. Space is so interesting, isn’t it?