WHAT IF YOU COULD CATCH A FALLING STAR?

Peekskill Meteorite

© AMNH/Jackie Beckett

FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FASCINATED by streaks of light flashing across the night sky. These "shooting stars" are actually tiny grains of dust from space that burn up in Earth's atmosphere before reaching the ground. But hundreds of times a year, a rock called a meteorite survives the fiery trip from space and lands on Earth. A small fraction of these "fallen stars"—really fallen rocks—are recovered each year from around the globe.

The vast majority of meteorites are pieces of asteroids, the small rocky bodies that orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. And while meteorites are not from stars, they contain vital clues that help scientists understand how stars like our Sun formed and how planets, including Earth, took shape more than four billion years ago.

PEEKSKILL METEORITE: LOCAL IMPACT

FALLING JUST A SHORT DISTANCE FROM NEW YORK CITY, THIS METEORITE BECAME FAMOUS FOR ITS UNUSUAL LANDING.

On October 9, 1992, a brilliant fireball flashed over Peekskill, New York, startling fans at a high school football game. Nearby residents heard a terrific crash as a rock the size of a bowling ball dropped from the sky onto a parked Chevy Malibu, piercing the trunk and denting the driveway beneath it. Seconds after the crash, the stone was found near the car's crumpled trunk, still warm and smelling of sulfur.