Earth occasionally gets hit by asteroid and comet debris. These two different types of objects result in two very different events in our sky. When such an object enters our atmosphere, usually at a very high speed, they leave a glowing path across the sky as the air is heated to a great temperature and ionized. Annual meteor showers are caused when the Earth passes through the stream of dust left behind in the orbit of some periodic comet. The Leonid meteor shower, which occurs every November, has a particularly interesting history. The Lyrids occur in May. The most important annual shower is the Perseid shower which puts on a show on the night of August 12th every year. Sporadic meteors are caused by chunks of asteroid debris, for the most part. These rocks hitting our atmosphere range from just a few centimeters across, to objects the size of a sports stadium. We actually get hit by the larger objects quite often, as seen in this footage from Russia in 2013. And here is a full documentary of that asteroid strike in Russia back in 2013. So how hard is it to actually get a picture of a meteor? More difficult than you may think! These vagabonds of the skies appear in two videos. The first, highlights comets. The second one goes in to greater detail about the resulting impacts. By the way, meteors are not the same thing as meteorites.

Meteors