[mee-tee-uh-roid] 
| any of the small bodies, often remnants of comets, traveling through space: when such a body enters the earth's atmosphere it is heated to luminosity and becomes a meteor. |
| me·te·or·oid (mē'tē-ə-roid') n. A solid body, moving in space, that is smaller than an asteroid and at least as large as a speck of dust. |
| meteoroid (mē'tē-ə-roid') Pronunciation Key
A small, rocky or metallic body revolving in interplanetary space around the Sun. A meteoroid is significantly smaller than an asteroid, ranging from small grains or particles to the size of large boulders. The clustered meteoroids associated with regular annual meteor showers are believed to be very small particles of cometary debris. Meteoroids that survive their passage through the Earth's atmosphere and land as meteorites are somewhat larger, solitary bodies and are encountered in no predictable pattern. See Note at meteor. |
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