Meteorologist, Not Meteor-Ologist

FOX31 has a spectacular video of space junk streaking through (and lighting up) the night sky over Denver. It looked like a meteor shower, and in fact their meteorologist blamed it on the Quadrantids. The station later found out that it was in fact a Russian SL-4 rocket body that was launched on December 27th. It had delivered its payload and was falling back to earth. They also asked the meteorologists faded and after stumbling around for a while he mentioned that they might be burning up (which is of course true). I give this guy a failing grade in Astronomy... but in his defense, he said:

"I'm a meteorologist, not a meteor-ologist."

Or, as Lewis Grizzard (?) used to say: Meaty Urologist.

Meteorology is called such because "meteors" are technically anything in the air. Paul Sirvatka, meteorology professor and storm chaser extraordinare, says that Meteorologists typically study hydrometeors, photometeors and eletrometeors, and sometimes even lithometeors. According to MeteorObs.Org, the study of meteors is technically the study of meteoroids, called meteorics.

You can LISTEN to meteors on the SpaceWeather.com site (use with caution, crashed my browser).