METEORITE

The small particles (up to approximately ten meters) that orbit about the Sun receive the name of meteoroids. These particles are associated with the comets and asteroids, but also they can have been started of satellites or planets after violent shocks with other bodies.

A fragment of the meteorite of Port photographed Lápice in situ for Alejandro Sánchez. The copy is exhibited at present in the National museum of Natural sciences. Credits: Alejandro Sánchez (Complutense University of Madrid).

When one of these extraterrestrial particles penetrates in the terrestrial ambience, it warms up for rubbing with the air, becomes incandescent and meteor or shooting star gives place to a so called light twinkle. There are called racing cars those meteors which luminosity is superior to that of the planet Venus.
Sometimes, the meteoroid responsible for a shooting star or for a racing car not volatiliza completely in the process and it survives point or fragmented up to coming to the soil. To this fragment of rock originated from the space we will call it a meteorite. The observation of the racing cars allows to reconstruct sometimes the trajectories and deduce the area of the surface where they have fallen down, what it helps to the meteorites recovery for his later study. The meteorites can be rocky, metallic, or a miscellany of both. His study informs us about the composition and history of the bodies of the solar system. More than 31 000 meteorites have recovered; their fall of more than 1000 was observed by some witness.

Glossary: "100 basic concepts of Astronomy”