How can we see meteors?

They're glowing white hot from the friction of re-entry, blazingly white hot, you can see the light. When that meteor imploded over Russia, it was the same as 20 to 30 Hiroshima bombs. Surely, you can see a Hiroshima bomb better than the engines on a jet...

A basketball-sized meteor would be much bigger than average. Most of them are about the size of sand grains or small pebbles.The reason you don't see jet engines is because they aren't burning up, turning into an incandescent vapor as they hurl through the atmosphere disintegrating at maybe 40 times the speed they are actually going. Meteors do, which is why most of them never reach the ground.

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You don't see the engines on a jet at all. You see the contrails left behind the engines because they reflect a lot of light. Meteors create a lot of light. And at night (how many have you seen during the day, rest assured they're still there) makes them visible. They're small but they're thousands of degrees. That puts out a lot of light. Just like how a chunk of iron in a hot fire will start to glow red, they glow.

Meteors are actually much smaller than basketballs, more the size of peas and sand. However they enter the atmosphere travelling at extremely high velocities, 30 km/sec, generating an enormous amount of heat from friction.

You don't see the actual meteor. You see the material burning off of the meteor at several hundred degrees. Against a dark sky something burning that hot is not hard to see, even when it's 40-50 miles up.

Because they burn up in the NIGHT SKY. They are very bright against the black background.

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You can't see them, only the light they give off.

You can see meteors sometimes on your TV screen.

you'd have to open your eyes to do that.