What is another name for a "shooting star"?

A meteor is any object, including an asteroid, entering the atmosphere that burns and vaporizes (leaving a visible light trail) upon impact with our atmosphere. Those objects that don't vaporize completely and hit the earth are known as meteorites. Comets are generally found in the Kuiper Belt which is outside the orbit of Neptune. They orbit our sun and produce a long tail (always in the opposite direction of the sun) due to the ice found in their composition. Asteroids are smaller than planets, without an atmosphere, and are mostly found between Mars and Jupiter but there are millions orbiting our Sun. Ceres, one of the largest asteroids found, is almost 1000 miles wide! A supernova is what happens when a star finally explodes and ejects its mass into space causing an enormous illumination in the sky. There have been recorded supernova that could actually been seen during the daytime. The only problem is the light we see may have been from 100 million to 10 billion years ago.