Humans have been awed by such things falling from the sky for along time. In particular, the ancients had a fascination for the type of meteorite that was formed from iron. In Assyria, these fallen chunks were called the "metal of heaven", and by the Norse "thunder stones". In China and Egypt, ritual iron axes and knives have been found made from meteorites. In some religious centers, such as the cult of Elgalbal in Rome, the deity itself was often represented by a meteorite.
Meteors, commonly called shooting or falling stars are scraps of space debris and sometimes space mission debris that enter earth's atmosphere and burn up, leaving a glowing trail of smoke, and sometimes fire. The majority of them are small, perhaps the size of a pebble and burn brightly for a few seconds before evaporating. Larger ones that visibly smoke and burn are called fireballs, and those that are large enough to hit the ground are called meteorites.
On any given night, there are about five to ten meteors an hour that could be visible from a very dark site. From time to time, the earth enters a zone full of space debris, and this produces an increased rate of shooting or falling stars, called a shower. These usually appear to stem from a particular point in the sky, called a radiant, and can last up to several days. Occasionally, the earth encounters a high rate of meteors, and we call this a meteor storm. These larger storms receive the most media attention, but showers can appear throughout the year and often go unnoticed by the public. If you are interested in following the showers, the web has many sites manned by professional and amateur astronomers that give a play by play description of events, and sometimes includes real time video.
The majority of scientific meteor observations are done by amateur astronomers!
Believe it or not, meteors leave an ionized trail behind them that can affect radio and tv signals. Discovered after WWII, over the past several years amateurs have been capitalizing on this to track meteors in a new way, using their radios and tv sets. The beauty of this method is that meteors can be tracked in broad daylight, bad weather, or during a full moon that would otherwise wash out the sky. Outdoor antennas and receivers work best, but it is still possible to do this using your regular indoor radio and sometimes even your car radio. To try this yourself, tune your ham radio to 40 MHz, or tune your regular radio to the FM band, from 88 to 108 MHz. Select a station that is not being used or that is very faint, so that you basically hear static, called "white noise". You will hear the signals as meteors zoom past, usually as a variety of pops and whistles. You might even want to record this on tape, and do it in conjunction with your visual observations so that you can hear the meteors and watch them at the same time. You can also experiment with your setup, for example if you still own a pair of rabbit ears (anyone old enough to remember those?) try putting them outside or on your car hood and running a lead wire into your house to the radio. Directional antennas work best, and of course if you are willing and have the budget you can rig together several antennas or construct your own radio-meteor observing station like some amateur groups are doing.
For more information visit these sites:
American Meteor Society
Radio Gallery of Meteors
Comets and Meteor Showers
Sky and Telescope's Meteor Page
Canadian Meteor Tracking by Radio
Star Trails