Meteors

Before the rocky dust becomes a meteor, it is first a meteoroid, which is just a rocky body that is located specifically in outer space. The sizes of meteoroids are quite variant but they range anywhere from grain-sized to about one meter wide. If smaller than this, the bodies are classified as micrometeoroids.

Once the meteoroid enters Earth's atmosphere and starts burning up due to aerodynamic friction, it becomes a meteor. Meteors glow for very short time intervals due to their interactions with atmospheric gases along with the evaporation of material within the meteor itself. Meteors usually disintegrate about 50-95 km above the surface of Earth but they are visible anywhere between 75-120 km above the surface.

After a meteor disintegrates, the leftover debris from its passage through the atmosphere is known as a meteoroid once the body touches the surface of the Earth. In geology, if a meteorite is large enough to form an impact crater(surface depression), it is known as a bolide. It should be noted that meteoroids are by no means exclusive to Earth. They can occur on pretty much any Solar System body that has a solid surface, like the Moon or Mars. The impact of meteorites here on Earth isn't always very obvious because geological processes like erosion work to naturally transfer the locations of meteorites.