What a Shooting Star Looks Like from Space

Photo By: NASA

Last week, during the height of the Perseid metor shower, an astronaut at the International Space Station snapped this incredible shot of a shooting star from above. Of course, shooting stars are just a whimsical name for meteors, which are bits of rock and debris that burn up as they enter our atmosphere. In the case of the Perseid meteor shower, the debris comes from the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle.

The line of green circling the Earth is called "airglow" and results from atoms and molecules about 30 miles high that are excited by solar radiation during the day, and release that energy as light at night, according to NASA.

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