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Not a Comet
A photograph of a "shooting star" and a comet look similar because we see them both as streaks of light in the night sky. But when you see a real comet in the sky, it normally does not move very fast, so it looks more like a stationary shooting star. Seeing a comet is a far rarer experience that catching a glimpse of a meteor. But a comet can cause a meteor, or shooting star, if pieces of the comet fall into the earth's atmosphere.
Not an Asteroid
Asteroids are chunks of rock and metal that orbit the sun; they are bigger than meteoroids, which stop being meteoroids when they're more than a mile across, according to Hot Liquid Magma. Asteroids can be hundreds of miles wide and are the likely source for most meteoroids. An asteroid crashing into the earth's atmosphere would do a lot more damage than cause a shooting star; in fact it was likely an asteroid or comet that wiped out the dinosaurs. Shooting stars typically burn out in the atmosphere before they hit the earth and rarely cause any harm.
The Burn
As a meteor heats up as it falls through the upper atmosphere, it gives off light as dust, metallic fragments and trapped gases split off from the main mass. The light from meteors sometimes seems like it's very close, when they are normally visible around 40 to 75 miles up, according to NASA. Shooting stars, or meteors, move across the night sky at supersonic speeds, with some looking like fireballs when the meteoroid is particularly large.
Meteoroids, Meteors and Meteorites
Meteoroids range in size from a small pebble to giant boulders, the largest weighing in at 60 metric tons (it became a meteorite when it landed in Namibia). NASA says there are millions of meteors every day in the earth's atmosphere, most the size of a small stone that glow for about a second. Some meteors, however, can leave a trail that lasts for several minutes.
Meteor Showers
Regular meteor showers appear in the night sky at different times of the year, some with a known comet parent. According to The Skyscrapers, the Quadrantids occur in January and provide about 40 big, bright meteors that can shine halfway across the sky and leave long trains of dust. Spring brings the Lyrids, which offers quick and bright meteors that last for a few seconds. The Lyrids appear again in June, bringing 10 meteors per hour. The slower Capricornids in midsummer are known for producing bright fireballs, and the late summer Perseids consistently produce 60 meteors per hour. The Leonids are known for their peak displays every 33 years that can display 100 meteors per hour (sorry, last one was in 2001). December brings the most consistent "showers," the Geminids, which offer multi-colored displays.