What is "meteor"

Meteor \Me"te*or\, n. [F. m['e]t['e]ore, Gr. ?, pl. ? things in the air, fr. ? high in air, raised off the ground; ? beyond + ?, ?, a suspension or hovering in the air, fr. ? to lift, raise up.]

1. Any phenomenon or appearance in the atmosphere, as clouds, rain, hail, snow, etc.

   Hail, an ordinary meteor.
   --Bp. Hall.

2. Specif.: A transient luminous body or appearance seen in the atmosphere, or in a more elevated region.

   The vaulty top of heaven Figured quite o'er with burning meteors.
   --Shak.

3. A mass of stone or other substance which sometimes falls to the earth from space beyond the moon, burning up from atomospheric friction and creating a brilliant but usually very brief trail of light in the atmosphere; also called a shooting star.

   Note: The term is especially applied to fireballs, and the masses of stone or other substances which sometimes fall to the earth; also to shooting stars and to ignes fatui. Meteors are often classed as: aerial meteors, winds, tornadoes, etc.; aqueous meteors, rain, hail, snow, dew, etc.; luminous meteors, rainbows, halos, etc.; and igneous meteors, lightning, shooting stars, and the like.

late 15c., "any atmospheric phenomenon," from Middle French meteore (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin meteorum (nominative meteora), from Greek ta meteora "the celestial phenomena, things in heaven above," plural of meteoron, literally "thing high up," noun use of neuter of meteoros (adj.) "high up, raised from the ground, hanging," from meta- "over, beyond" (see meta-) + -aoros "lifted, hovering in air," related to aeirein "to raise" (see aorta).\n

\nSpecific sense of "fireball, shooting star" is attested from 1590s. Atmospheric phenomena were formerly classified as aerial meteors (wind), aqueous meteors (rain, snow, hail), luminous meteors (aurora, rainbows), and igneous meteors (lightning, shooting stars).

n. 1 (context archaic English) Any atmospheric phenomenon. (Thus the derivation of ''meteorology.'') These were sometimes classified as ''aerial'' or ''airy'' meteors (winds), ''aqueous'' or ''watery'' meteors (hydrometeors: clouds, rain, snow, hail, dew, frost), ''luminous'' meteors (rainbows and aurora), and ''igneous'' or ''fiery'' meteors (lightning and shooting stars [next]). 2 A fast-moving streak of light in the night sky caused by the entry of extraterrestrial matter into the earth's atmosphere: A shooting star or falling star. 3 (context juggling English) A prop similar to ''poi balls'', in that it is twirled at the end of a cord or cable. 4 (context martial arts English) A striking weapon resembling a track and field hammer throw consisting of a weight swung at the end of a cable or chain. vb. (cx intransitive English) To move at great speed.

1. n. a streak of light in the sky at night that results when a meteoroid hits the earth's atmosphere and air friction causes the meteoroid to melt or vaporize or explode [syn: shooting star]

2. (astronomy) any of the small solid extraterrestrial bodies that hits the earth's atmosphere [syn: meteoroid]

Meteor is a designation of a series of Polish sounding rockets. The Meteor rockets were built between 1963 and 1974.

Meteor - Polish one and two stages meteorological rockets, using the solid fuel, constructed with destination for research of the top layers of terrestrial atmosphere, also directions and forces of winds from 18 to more than 50 km above the Earth surface. These rockets were designed by Polish engineers of Warsaw Aviation Institute (for example professor Jacek Walczewski) and had been produced by WZK-Mielec factory.

A meteor or "shooting star" is the visible streak of light from a heated and glowing meteoroid falling through the Earth's atmosphere.

Meteor may also refer to:

The Meteor spacecraft are weather observation satellites launched by the USSR and Russia. The Meteor satellite series was developed during the 1960s. The Meteor satellites were designed to monitor atmospheric and sea-surface temperatures, humidity, radiation, sea ice conditions, snow-cover, and clouds.

Meteor is an active radar guided beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) being developed by MBDA. Meteor will offer a multi-shot capability against long range manoeuvring targets in a heavy electronic countermeasures (ECM) environment with range in excess of .

It is intended to equip the Eurofighter Typhoons of the United Kingdom Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Saudi Air Force, Germany's Luftwaffe, Spain's Ejército del Aire and Italian Air Force, British and Italian F-35s, Dassault Rafale of French Armée de l'air, the Saab JAS 39 Gripen of the Swedish Air Force and Czech Air Force, and the Dassault Rafale of the Egyptian Air Force and the Qatar Air Force.

It entered service in the Swedish air force in April 2016, with the SwAF as the first operator of the missile due to most testing having been done on the JAS-39. It officially achieved initial operating capability (IOC) with Swedish air force Gripens in July 2016, and it was announced at the Farnborough Air Show that the Czech air force would soon reach IOC as well. According to MBDA, Meteor has three to six times the kinematic performance of current air-air missiles of its type. The key to Meteor's performance is a throttleable ducted rocket ( ramjet) manufactured by Bayern-Chemie of Germany.

Meteor Mobile Communications Limited is a GSM and UMTS mobile telecommunications company in Ireland. They operate a GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE/ UMTS( HSPA+) and LTE cellular communications network under licence from the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), and were the third entrant in the market, after Vodafone Ireland and Three Ireland. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Irish telecoms network Eir, having been purchased for €420m in 2005. Meteor is the only Irish owned mobile operator in Ireland.

Meteor issue new numbers with the prefix code 085. Since the introduction of full mobile number portability in Ireland, access codes have become less relevant as mobile telephone users may now retain their mobile telephone numbers when moving between mobile network operators. As a result, Meteor customers can now have numbers starting with the codes 083, 085, 086, 087, or 089.

As of September 2008, Meteor has over 1 million customers, or 20% of the market.

Meteor is a 1979 science fiction Technicolor disaster film in which scientists detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and struggle with international, Cold War politics in their efforts to prevent disaster. The film stars Sean Connery and Natalie Wood.

It was directed by Ronald Neame from a screenplay by Edmund H. North and Stanley Mann, which was inspired by a 1967 MIT report Project Icarus. The movie co-starred Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Joseph Campanella, Richard Dysart and Henry Fonda.

METeOR (Metadata Online Registry), Australia’s repository for national metadata standards for health, housing and community services statistics and information. METeOR is a Metadata registry based on the 2003 version of the ISO/IEC 11179 Information technology - Metadata registries standard. METeOR was developed to store, manage and disseminate metadata in the Australian health, community services and housing assistance sectors.

Meteor is a 2009 American disaster television miniseries directed by Ernie Barbarash, written by Alex Greenfield and distributed by RHI Entertainment, in association with Alpine Medien Productions, Larry Levinson Productions and Grand Army Entertainment. Shot in the United States, The Movie Stars Marla Sokoloff, Michael Rooker, Billy Campbell, Stacy Keach, Christopher Lloyd, Kenneth Mitchell, Ernie Hudson, Mimi Michaels and Jason Alexander. The Story shows about the asteroid 114 Kassandra on a collision course with the Earth. Its surrounding meteorites crash into various locations worldwide, including the small town of Taft, California, while the military is having little success eliminating it and their Mission is to prevent the Meteor from Colliding the Earth and deflect it into the Sun.

The first part of the film was broadcast on the NBC network July 12, 2009 and the second part aired a week later on July 19, 2009.

A skill toy of Asian origin, the meteor consists of a rope, usually between 5 and 8 feet long, with weights attached to either end. Tricks are performed by swinging, wrapping and throwing the meteor about the body.

Meteor (foaled 1839) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse who won the 2000 Guineas Stakes in 1842. He was owned by John Bowes and trained by John Scott.

Meteor, also known as Meteor Houston, Meteor Nightclub, or Meteor Urban Video Lounge, is a gay bar and nightclub in Houston, Texas, in the United States. The bar hosts an annual Mr. Gay Pride Houston competition.

Meteor was a marque of automobiles offered by Ford in Canada from 1949 to 1976. The make was retired for the 1962 and 1963 model years, when the name was used for the Mercury Meteor sold in the United States. It succeeded the Mercury 114, a Canadian-market Mercury based on the Ford, the "114" name being taken from the car's wheelbase.

It complemented the Mercury, and gave Canadian Mercury-Lincoln dealers a car to sell in the low-price market, against the Canadian Pontiac. Similarly, Canadian Ford dealers offered the Monarch, a car based on the Mercury, to compete against the Oldsmobile. This was due to the dealer structure in Canada, where smaller communities might have only a single dealer that was expected to carry a full line of models in both the low- and mid-price classes. From 1949-59, Meteor typically ran fourth in overall sales, behind Chevrolet, Ford, and Pontiac.

The initial 1949 Meteor was introduced on June 25, 1948, at the same time the Ford Deluxe and Custom series were introduced across North America, and shared the new postwar full-sized Ford bodies, chassis, and powertrains but with unique trim. It used a Mercury grille and was powered by a , 239 CID flathead V8 similar to that used in 1946-53 U.S. Ford passenger cars. Meteor, as well as the Canadian Ford, kept the flathead V8 engine through 1954. The new OHV V8 which US Fords offered beginning in 1954 was not introduced in Canada until the 1955 model year. The following year, Ford of Canada introduced a six-cylinder engine for Canadian Ford and Meteor cars. Meteor models continued to use the Ford body with unique items such as grilles, taillights, and moldings. The 1952-54 Meteors used Mercury instrument panels and dashboards. In mid-1954, some Niagara and Rideau models began using Ford instrument panels and dashes. These cars were named Niagara Special and Rideau Special and were priced around C$67 less than regular Niagaras or Rideaus.

In 1954, Meteor changed to its own series names. The entry-level car was called just Meteor, replacing Ford's Mainline series. The mid-level Customline became the Niagara, while the top trim level changed from Crestline to Rideau. A rebadged, Canadian-built version of the Ford Ranchero was added in 1957, and continued to be produced until 1959. The Montcalm series was added in mid-1959 as a counterpart to Ford's new Galaxie models.

Meteor was discontinued after 1961 for a number of reasons. The Meteor name had been selected for Mercury's new intermediate model beginning in 1962, and Mercury itself had been dropped down in price due to slow sales and the discontinuation of the Edsel.

Due to dealer pressure, however, Ford released a lower-priced "Mercury 400" in 1963 that stood in the price bracket formerly occupied by the Meteor. When the intermediate Mercury Meteor was dropped after 1963, Ford of Canada relaunched Meteor as a standalone make in 1964, and dropped Mercury's Monterey series in Canada. The 1964 Meteor looked nearly identical to the 1964 Mercury, save for its Ford dashboard and interior, and was available in a base and Custom series. For 1965, the full range of model names that had existed in 1961 returned: Rideau, Rideau 500, and Montcalm. The Montego was added as a top-range model for 1967, but when that name was selected for use by Mercury in the U.S. beginning in 1968, it was renamed LeMoyne, and continued through 1970. A sport-themed Montcalm S-33 model was available from 1966-70.

Although Meteor was still considered as a separate marque through 1976, after 1968, the cars also carried Mercury badging and were advertised as the "Mercury Meteor". After 1976, the Rideau 500 and Montcalm names, as well as the unique trim items, were dropped. The Meteor name was then used on a lower-priced variant of the Mercury Marquis, called the Mercury Marquis Meteor, built until 1981.

Meteor.jpg|1959 Meteor Niagara 300 four-door sedan Meteor Rideau 500 (3841638524).jpg|1960 Meteor Rideau 500 four-door sedan Meteor Rideau (14252728170).jpg|1968 Meteor Rideau 500 two-door hardtop (537786392).jpg|1975-1976 Mercury Meteor Rideau 500 four-door pillared hardtop

Meteor, or MeteorJS, is a free and open-source JavaScript web framework written using Node.js. Meteor allows for rapid prototyping and produces cross-platform (web, Android, iOS) code. It integrates with MongoDB and uses the Distributed Data Protocol and a publish–subscribe pattern to automatically propagate data changes to clients without requiring the developer to write any synchronization code. On the client, Meteor depends on jQuery and can be used with any JavaScript UI widget library.

Meteor is developed by the Meteor Development Group. The startup was incubated by Y Combinator and received $11.2M in funding from Andreessen Horowitz in July 2012.

The Meteor was a named passenger train operated by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (a.k.a. SLSF or "the Frisco"). It ran overnight between Oklahoma City and St. Louis via Tulsa and was later extended to Lawton, Oklahoma on July 18, 1955. The name was shared with a branch line Meteor running between Monett, Missouri, and Paris, Texas. Later this line was truncated to terminate at Fort Smith, Arkansas. These Frisco trains should not be confused with Amtrak's Silver Meteor.

The Meteor began early in the 20th Century; one engineer who joined the Frisco in 1917 recalled that the Meteor was already a well-known train at that time. Initially the trains were pulled by Frisco-class 1300 locomotives, being high-wheeled Baldwin engines with 2-8-0 wheel arrangements. During the late 1930s and into the early years of World War II, Frisco-class 1500 Baldwin engines with 4-8-2 wheel arrangements took over the job.

Frisco-class 4500 locomotives, and specifically locomotives No. 4500, 4501 and 4502, being three of twenty-five Northern class Baldwin 4-8-4s built for Frisco during World War II, were later designated for use on the Meteor. These locomotives were delivered in a distinctive zephyr blue, white and gray paint scheme with "Meteor" spelled out across the tender in bold red lettering. These three passenger engines also saw service pulling the Texas Special. In 1948, Frisco 4501 still in its Meteor livery pulled President Harry S. Truman's whistle stop tour train through his home state of Missouri.

When the Meteor was converted to use diesel locomotives, No. 4500 was re-painted into Frisco's standard black with gold striping and lettering and assigned to passenger trains such as the General Wood and the Will Rogers.

Engine No. 4501 resides at the Museum of the American Railroad, in Frisco, Texas. The cosmetically-restored Engine No. 4500 resides at the Route 66 Historical Village in Tulsa, OK.

The new streamlined, diesel equipped Meteor began westbound operations on May 14, 1948, with its first eastbound train departing Oklahoma City on May 15. After its maiden trip the president of the Frisco - in an interview - pointed to a glass of water in his private car filled nearly to the brim with water. "Not a drop spilled between St. Louis and Tulsa," he said proudly. Frisco purchased the EMD E7 locomotives and Pullman cars for the Meteor at the same time as they purchased ones for the Texas Special, so the two trains shared a distinctive look; bright red with corrugated aluminum side panels. Frisco bought sets of named cars for each train.