Ablation produces the glowing streaks of 2026 Perseid meteors in Earth’s atmosphere. As a meteoroid plunges through air at high speed, heating causes material to vaporize from its surface.
The luminous trail is created mainly by heated atmospheric gases and vaporized meteoroid material, rather than by the object simply burning like a terrestrial flame. Collisions with air molecules compress and heat the gas around the incoming particle, making the trail visible from the ground.
A Perseid is called a meteoroid before atmospheric entry and a meteor while the luminous phenomenon is visible. If any surviving fragment reaches the ground, that recovered material is called a meteorite. These terms describe different stages of the same general event and are often incorrectly used interchangeably.