Shooting stars

[AwixBawix101]

What is the frequency of a shooting star? How often do can one see one in the sky?

[adydb]

Shooting stars are not predictable as such, unlike Comets.

Comets are bodies on an orbit, whereas 'Shooting Stars' are just junk being sucked into our gravity at *random , this can be as small as a speck of sand to create a great 'streak'.

*Except for the leonids, which is band of particles the Earth travels through each Nowember time.

[smorodina]

The Perseids, in August, almost always guarantee a lot of sightings, but if you look for long enough at any time of the year you will probably see some. You just need a bit of patience.

[KebabMeister]

Shooting stars can be predictable.  There are several meteor showers throughout the year with the 'Perseid' shower being the most popular/regular in the northern hemisphere.  You can see up to 60 an hour during that period.  These showers are basically clouds of debris/dust that the Earth pass through when it orbits the Sun.  Even a spec of sand will show up as a shooting star.

There are other random shooting stars (Meteorites) which are other objects entering the Earths atmosphere such as rocks, debris, even space junk.  There is an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and sometimes an asteroid collides with another and debris/meteors head towards Earth.

Incidently, a meteor is an object that enters the Earth's orbit/atmosphere.  A meteorite is a meteor that actually reaches the Earth's ground.