Probably most of us have seen meteors or stars shooting. A meteor is a light flash we see in the sky of the night when a small chunk of interplanetary debris burns up as it passes through our atmosphere. "Meteor" refers to the light flash that the debris causes, not the debris itself.
The debris are called a meteoroid. A meteoroid is a piece of interplanetary matter that is smaller 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 to fall through the Earth's atmosphere and lands, 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 an enormous boulder that destroys life).
Asteroids are usually larger pieces of rock from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter's orbits.
Comets are asteroid-like objects covered with ice, methane, ammonia, and other compounds that develop a blurred, cloud-like shell called a coma and sometimes a visible tail when orbiting near the Sun.
