Interplanetary space is littered with rocks tens of meters in diameter or less.
When these meteoroids strike the Earth's atmosphere at high relative speeds they leave visible trails created when the intense heat caused by friction vaporizes them. Fireballs Most meteors are tiny specks of dust and rapidly burn up in the atmosphere. The following three images show some recently observed fireballs. The left image shows the path of a fireball recorded over Hannover, Germany. The middle image shows a fireball recorded in the 1996 Perseid meteor shower by the Dutch Meteor Society .