Not to be picky... but...
Whenever artists show meteor or comet impacts, they invariably show the incoming body “burning” brightly many hundreds or thousands of miles up in altitude.
This does not occur in sweet reality. The “burn” begins well UNDER 100 miles up. The burn only lasts very briefly, because the objects are moving very, very fast, indeed. Tens of thousands of miles an hour. Many miles a second.
From the beginning of the burn to impact is a matter or only a few seconds at most. During that time, the heat of entering the atmosphere is both sudden and extreme — which is one reason why so very much heat energy is liberated and why the objects often explode with a colossal blast. The deceleration in Gs is fabulous. Thousands of Gs is a force like hitting a brick wall.
To me, this seems even more awe-inspiring than the long burn depiction.
Picky, I know — but the real effect is truly amazing.
Hope you never see one!
I saw a fireball about 10 years ago. Green flame and smoke as it moved (apparently) slowly across the sky. Looked to be 2 or 3 thousand feet up but in reality maybe 100 miles. People called in to report an airplane burning. It was spectacular.
Shoemaker–Levy 9, perhaps, but that was from some distance.
In the summer of, hmm, 2002, a coworker who was a little spacey most of the time was staring at a spot in the sky. He said to me, "is that a -- shooting star?" I looked up and saw an incoming piece of space junk large enough to make out more than just a nighttime streak. The body was tumbling and coming apart, really interesting, and I kept watching it until the local trees blocked it out. This was in broad daylight. Never saw anything on the news about it, so my guess is, it was shaken to pieces and was probably nothing but pebbles by the time all the remaining mass hit the ground in multiple places.
Buuuut, you're right, quite a correct quibble.