Green, I guarantee that there are meteors heading right at Earth, this very minute. Thank heavens there are very few large meteorites, though! Here is how one website describes the differences:
"A meteor is the flash of light that we see in the night sky when a small chunk of interplanetary debris burns up as it passes through our atmosphere. "Meteor" refers to the flash of light caused by the debris, not the debris itself.
"The debris is called a meteoroid. A meteoroid is a piece of interplanetary matter that is smaller than a kilometer and frequently only millimeters in size. Most meteoroids that enter the Earth's atmosphere are so small that they vaporize completely and never reach the planet's surface.
"If any part of a meteoroid survives the fall through the atmosphere and lands on Earth, it is called a meteorite. Although the vast majority of meteorites are very small, their size can range from about a fraction of a gram (the size of a pebble) to 100 kilograms (220 lbs) or more (the size of a huge, life-destroying boulder)."
One term the authors don't mention is a "bolide" -- a fireball from a bigger rock than usual. Sometimes, those are so bright that they can be seen during the day -- this famous bolide streaked over Jackson Lake and the Tetons on August 10, 1972:
Can you imagine what something like that would look like on a dark night??
