“shooting star” is not a star

A "shooting star" has nothing to do with a star. These wonderful stripes of light that you can infrequently witness in the night sky are caused by small bits of filth and rock called meteoroids falling into the Earth's atmosphere and blazing up. The short-lived trace of light which is produced by burning meteoroid is called a meteor. Meteors are generally called falling stars or shooting stars. If any fraction of the meteoroid survives and actually strikes the Earth, that left behind bit is then called a meteorite.

At definite times of year, you are probable to see a large number of meteors in the night sky. These actions are called meteor showers and they happen when the Earth passes through the trail of debris left by a comet as it orbits the Sun. These showers are given names based on the constellation present in the sky from which they appear to originate. For example, the Leonid Meteor Shower, or Leonids, appear to originate in the constellation Leo. It is important to understand that the meteoroids (and therefore the meteors) do not really originate from the constellations or any of the stars in the constellations, however. They just appear to come from that part of the sky because of the way the Earth encounters the particles moving in the path of the comet's orbit. Associating the shower name with the region of the sky they appear to come from just helps astronomers know where to look!