Meteor

A meteor is the streak of light and associated atmospheric effects produced when a meteoroid enters an atmosphere. Its visible glow comes mainly from heated, excited gas and vaporized material.

Atmospheric entry: The passage of an object from space into a planetary atmosphere at high speed. Frictional heating, compression, and ablation during entry create the luminous trail.
Meteoroid: A natural solid object moving through space, smaller than an asteroid and larger than interplanetary dust. The meteoroid is the source object before atmospheric entry.
Meteor radar: A radar technique that detects ionized meteor trails to measure winds and other properties of the upper atmosphere. Meteor trails act as targets for measuring winds in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere.
Fireball: An exceptionally bright meteor, conventionally brighter than the planets as seen from Earth. A fireball is a particularly luminous meteor, not a separate kind of space object.
Ablation: The removal of material from a surface by heating, vaporization, or erosion. Ablation supplies vaporized meteoroid material to the glowing wake.
Meteorite: A fragment of a natural space object that survives passage through an atmosphere and reaches the ground. A meteor is the atmospheric light; a meteorite is surviving material recovered on the ground.
Forward scatter: Radio propagation that uses ionized meteor trails to reflect or scatter signals between distant stations. Meteor ionization can briefly carry radio signals beyond the normal horizon.
Bolide: A very bright meteor that may fragment explosively and produce a sonic boom. The term often emphasizes explosive breakup, whereas meteor names the atmospheric light phenomenon broadly.
Plasma: An ionized gas containing charged particles that respond collectively to electromagnetic forces. Ionized atoms and molecules in a meteor's wake help produce its light and radio effects.
Asteroid: A small rocky or metallic body orbiting the Sun, larger than most meteoroids and smaller than planets. Asteroids can be the parent bodies of meteoroids that later produce meteors.

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