Stand outdoors on a clear, dark night, and before long, you’re almost sure to see a star zip across the sky.

You may know it as a “shooting” star or “falling” star; some may even say they saw a comet.

But these phenomena are none of the above. Astronomers know they are meteors.

So what’s the difference? I’m glad you asked, because I was going to tell you anyway!

While they may look like falling stars, they are about as different from stars as one can get. Stars, you may recall, are massive globes of hot gases not unlike the sun trillions of miles away.

Meteors, however, are specks of dust — most are smaller than a grain of sand — pulled in from our solar system by the Earth’s gravitation.

When one of these hits our upper atmosphere at tens of miles per second, it ignites and causes the nearby atmospheric gases to glow. It’s this fiery demise that we see as a meteor.

Comets, on the other hand, are huge chunks of dirty ice that whirl around the sun over periods of years, decades or centuries.

They don’t go whipping across our sky, but they do lose dusty material as they round the sun, and some of this material can fall to Earth in the form of meteors many years after the comet’s visit.

Some of us old-timers may remember seeing the most famous of all comets — Halley’s Comet — back in 1986. It wasn’t particularly bright during that visit, but it will be when it returns in 2061.

Now if you don’t want to wait 37 years to see Halley on its next pass, you can see fragments it left behind on previous orbits during the Eta Aquarid meteor shower in early May.

Stargazers have watched the Eta Aquarids since about 74 B.C., but the shower wasn’t officially “discovered” until Lt. Col. George Lyon Tupman recorded it in 1870.

To view the shower, head away from city lights to where the sky is dark and clear. Under ideal conditions, stargazers may see a meteor every minute or two.

It’s best to view it during the hours just before dawn. At that time the waning crescent moon will lie very low in the eastern sky, so its light won’t diminish this year’s show.

While you’ll see meteors all around the sky, those from this shower will appear to radiate from the constellation Aquarius.

To determine if a meteor is part of the meteoric swarm left behind by Halley’s Comet, trace its path backward.

If its path intersects the middle of Aquarius low in the east-southeastern sky before dawn, the meteor almost certainly originated from Halley’s Comet.

If its path appears not to intersect Aquarius, the meteor is called a “sporadic” meteor; in other words, it’s just a random speck of dust that we coincidentally scooped up around the same time.

As with all meteor showers, you will need nothing except your eyes, a lawn chair or sleeping bag, and some warm clothing.

You may wish to have binoculars handy, however, to check out any persistent smoke trails left behind by some of the brightest meteors.