how far away can you see a meteor
Meteoroid Meteors become visible between about 75 to 120 km (45 to 75 mi) above Earth. They usually disintegrate at altitudes of 50 to 95 km (30 to 60 mi).[29] Meteors have roughly a fifty percent chance of a daylight (or near daylight) collision with Earth. Most meteors are, however, observed at night, when darkness allows fainter objects to be recognized. For bodies with a size scale larger than 10 cm to several meters meteor visibility is due to the atmospheric ram pressure (not friction) that heats the meteoroid so that it glows and creates a shining trail of gases and melted meteoroid particles. The gases include vaporised meteoroid material and atmospheric gases that heat up when the meteoroid passes through the atmosphere. Most meteors glow for about a second.
Meteoroid An estimated 15,000 tonnes of meteoroids, micrometeoroids and different forms of space dust enter Earth's atmosphere each year.[8]
Meteoroid When a meteoroid, comet, or asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere at a speed typically in excess of 20 km/s (72,000 km/h; 45,000 mph), aerodynamic heating of that object produces a streak of light, both from the glowing object and the trail of glowing particles that it leaves in its wake. This phenomenon is called a meteor or "shooting star". A series of many meteors appearing seconds or minutes apart and appearing to originate from the same fixed point in the sky is called a meteor shower. If that object withstands ablation from its passage through the atmosphere as a meteor and impacts with the ground, it is then called a meteorite.
Meteoroid Meteoroids are significantly smaller than asteroids, and range in size from small grains to one-meter-wide objects.[2] Objects smaller than this are classified as micrometeoroids or space dust.[2][3][4] Most are fragments from comets or asteroids, whereas others are collision impact debris ejected from bodies such as the Moon or Mars.[5][6][7]