I posted a response yesterday and it disappeared, so here goes again. Meteors are vaporized by the heat of air compression (NOT air “friction&rdquo as they hit the atmosphere at ultrasonic speeds. A thick pad of air compressed to several thousand PSI forms on the leading edge. At that pressure the temperature rises to several thousand degrees, melting, then vaporizing the meteor. So technically it’s not “burning,” but vaporizing. The color is a result of the chemical makeup, just like in a spectrometer. As others have noted, several metals will produce blue or green light.

Awesome!