Starship Asterisk*

Anthony Barreiro wrote:("Leonids" are meteors from the Leonid meteor shower. I'm sure the same chemical processes take place in meteors from the Eta Aquariid and other meteor showers. And now I'm sure that Chris will correct me.)

Nope. However, it should be noted that light from the meteoroid constituents is rarely strong enough to overpower that from the ionized atmosphere. So most of the observed color is atmospheric in origin, not meteoritic. Spectral bands from meteoroid components are typically only seen clearly in spectrograms.