It sounds like the sonic boom of an airplane, but as a distant rumble. The brief glow behind the meteor head is called the wake . The wake is mainly the green light of neutral oxygen atoms. Wakes last 1-10 seconds. Sometimes wake is also used to describe the area directly behind the meteor head.
Persistent trains last long enough to enable telescopic studies of the path of a meteor.
This image was obtained at the Observatori Astronomic de Mallorca in November of 1998. Some days of the year show a larger number of meteors than usual that all have a common origin. The Leonids are such a meteor stream. The radiant of the Leonids is in the constellation Leo. The radiant is a perspective effect.