Very cool time lapse video of a meteor explosion, with the milky way in sight! The video is made up of 120 consecutive 30 second exposures. What makes a meteor explode? Well, asteroids are just chunks of rock, so what makes them so explosive? In a word: speed. When they enter the atmosphere the kinetic energy, or energy of motion, of a speeding asteroid is enormous, so it causes a heat wave which heats the rock up and can cause it to explode. This meteor explosion was small enough that we felt no effects from it, but you might remember some incidents like what has happened in Russia in 2013, when a large meteor shocked people there, creating a fiery blaze and brightening the skies.