What is a shooting star?

Shooting stars are tiny meteors that glow white hot when they hurtle from out of space into the earth’s atmosphere. 

If you look up at the sky long enough on a dark, clear night, you may see the fiery streak of a “shooting star” flash across the sky. 

Shooting Star

While “shooting star” may be a pretty name, it is not accurate, for real stars are great glowing balls of gases far out in space.

The “shooting stars” that streaks across the sky are bits of rock and metal called meteors.  Many billions of meteors zip around through space.

Many of them come so close that they are captured by earth’s gravity, and are pulled toward earth.  As the speeding meteors hurtle into the earth’s atmosphere, friction with the air causes them to glow white hot.  Then we see them as blazing trails of lights.

Meteors rarely blaze for more than a few seconds.  Most of those we see were originally no bigger than a grain of rice.  They usually burn up before they reach the ground.

Meteors that survive their fall and land on earth are called meteorites.-Dick Rogers

How Does A Camera Take Pictures?

Camera

Camera film is coated with special chemical sensitive to light.  A camera is basically a box which light cannot enter, except through a small hole located at one end of the camera.

This opening is covered with a glass lens.  A shutter opens and closes the hole behind the lens.  When we open  and close the shutter of the camera quickly, light enters through the lens.

The lens throws a picture of what is in front of the camera onto the film inside.  The film is coated with a chemical sensitive to light.  When a picture is flashed onto the film, a chemical change takes place, and an invisible picture is formed on the film.

Later, at the camera shop, the film is developed in special solutions to make the film picture visible.  This film picture is called a “negative.”  The photographer uses the negative to make the photograph we see. Moving picture cameras work much like other cameras.  They simply take one picture after another very rapidly.– Dick Rogers