>Is it dark out? If you are somewhere dark and it isn’t too cloudy, step outside and see if you can spot a shooting star.
According to NASA, shooting stars aren’t really shooting stars. They are meteors which are bits of rock that have fallen off comets or asteroids. They are often very small (like a pebble or smaller). The reason we can see them is because they are burning up from entering the Earth’s atmosphere. When they disappear, it is because they have burned up.
Bonus: The Lyrids Meteor shower is taking place tonight and tomorrow night. They are predicting about 20 meteors to fall an hour. That means one every five minutes!
This activity promotes environment awareness and visual recognition skills.