How many meteors would strike the earth on one night?

On the 8th of this month I was outside my house at
about 9:30P.M. with my binoculars watching the skies, and all of a sudden I observed a huge fireball streaking
across the sky and then it went behind a hill and
disapeared. I watch the sky about half an hour every
other day and have seen shooting stars but never
anything hit the ground.

So how often do rocks from space get though our
atmosphere? I would appreciate any input at all.

P.S. I don't think it was an alien ship crashing.

Well I am no astronomer but I can tell you something.

When I was young I lived North of the city that I have spend over 20 years in and the night sky was amazing.

In all the years of my youth I think I only saw maybe 3 shooting stars or comets or what have you.

In the past few years on the few times I get out of the city and I observe the sky, I have seen as many as 4 shooting stars in one night!

Is it me or are they coming?

Um, from memory (a risky business) I vaguely recall something about on average you would see 3 shooting stars per hour. Which means that would only be in the small region of sky visible to you. As for worldwide statistics I have no idea, most likely in the thousands(millions?) however.

Just look at the amount of craters on the moon, which is smaller, has six times less gravity and has no atmosphere...

I would say tens of thousands per day at least. And I think I'm being conservative here.

As for "space rocks" or asteroids or whatever you would like to call them...
If you take into consideration that the earth is what ? 75% water?, then you can think that only a very small percentage hit "land". Plus, how many burn up in the atmosphere before hitting ground? The possibilities of discovering something intact are very small I would think.

Raptor,

the estimated numbers look something like 99.99999% of objects that hit the atmosphere burn up. With that said something in the neighborhood of 10,000 objects hit the ionosphere every day. So in any given day, 2-3 objects make it through. If you figure on the high side that 700+ objects get through a year only 27% will hit land somewhere (Earth's surface is 73% water). So less than 100 objects will make land. Of the ones that hit the surface of the earth the vast majority are the size of a pinky nail or smaller...

hrxll

Originally posted by HerExcellency
Raptor,

the estimated numbers look something like 99.99999% of objects that hit the atmosphere burn up. With that said something in the neighborhood of 10,000 objects hit the ionosphere every day. So in any given day, 2-3 objects make it through. If you figure on the high side that 700+ objects get through a year only 27% will hit land somewhere (Earth's surface is 73% water). So less than 100 objects will make land. Of the ones that hit the surface of the earth the vast majority are the size of a pinky nail or smaller...

hrxll

Thats some good mathmatics, but I'm sure this was asteroid or a crashing plane. There have been no
reports of a plane crash on my local news!

[Edited on 9-12-2003 by Raptor]

According to astronomers, the number striking the earth per day is "billions." Only a small percentage are large enough to see (and of course it needs a cloudless night and someone looking in the right direction during the 2-5 second duration of the event.)
www.unc.edu...

During the meteor showers (such as the Leonids) upwards of 60 meteorites per hour can be seen. Counts ranging in the hundreds aren't unusual.