As I was taking the dog out this evening, I saw a falling star shoot through the sky. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever seen this. So I cracked open World Book, Mac OS X Edition and found...

Meteor is a bright streak of light that appears briefly in the sky. Observers often call meteors shooting stars or falling stars because they look like stars falling from the sky. People sometimes call the brightest meteors fireballs. A meteor appears when a particle or chunk of metallic or stony matter called a meteoroid enters the earth's atmosphere from outer space. Air friction heats the meteoroid so that it glows and creates a shining trail of gases and melted meteoroid particles. The gases include vaporized meteoroid material and atmospheric gases that heat up when the meteoroid passes through the atmosphere. Most meteors glow for about a second.

Sounds right. It faded after falling for about a second.

By the way, iTunes Music Store produced the following search results:

• 38 songs titled Falling Star
• 53 songs titled Shooting Star
• 9 songs titled Meteor

Labels: research