What we generally call shooting stars are not stars of course, they are mostly grains of dust that smash into our atmosphere and briefly burn up, but there is such a thing as a real shooting star !
It may look like stars sit in our night sky motionless, but they and we are moving at incredible speeds, and not all in the same direction or at the same speed.
Zeta Ophiuchus is one such high proper motion stars, but what happens when these stars hurtle through interstellar banks of dust and gas ? A bow shockwave irradiated by the stars UV light and glows red.
The star itself is a mag 2 O type star sitting near the ecliptic, the path of the Sun around the night sky, otherwise known as the Zodiac.
But wait .. Who here was born under Ophiuchus ? ;)
Stars like Zeta Oph tend to gain their great speeds when flung out of their birth nebula by interaction with other stars also born nearby, or even supernova of a binary partner, some even fly straight out of the galaxy. It is believed Zeta Oph was the latter, and astronomers think they even have found the remnant pulsar that was once it's binary partner (PSR B1929+10)
