COMETS, ASTEROIDS, AND METEORS, OH MY!

Comets

Loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles

Orbits are usually very long, narrow eclipses

When orbit come close to Sun, it heats up, ice turns into gas, releasing dust

Structure of a Comet Coma – gas and dust that form an

outer layer Nucleus – inner layer of comet Tail – can stretch for millions of

kilometers

Where are comets found?

Kuiper belt – disc-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune (billions of

kilometers from our sun)

Oort Cloud – spherical cloud of comets Spans 30 trillion kilometers from the sun

Kuiper Belt

Oort Cloud

Jan Oort Hypothesiz

ed cloud in 1950

Bayeux Tapestry

Commemorates the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, depicts an apparition of Comet Halley.

Halley’s Comet

76 years

Halley’s Comet

Comet Shoe-Maker Levy 9 Short periodic comet 1993 collided with Jupiter

Meteoroid

Come from comets or asteroids Chunk of rock or dust in space

Fun Fact:On average a meteor streaks overhead every 10 minutes!

The Life of a Meteoroid

Comets or asteroids break to create a meteroid

Meteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere meteor (burns up in the sky)

Meteroid passes through Earth’s atmosphere and hits Earth’s surface meteorite

Meteor Showers

October 20, 2011 – pieces of Halley’s comet

Asteroids

Rocky objects revolving around the sun

Too small and numerous to be planets

Asteroid belt found between Mars and Jupiter

Asteroid Ida

Asteroid Belt

Where the majority of asteroids are found

Big Bang Theory

65 million years ago

Yucatan Pennisula, Mexico

Crater 200 kilometers in diameter

Why are there so many craters on the moon compared to the Earth?

Moon has no atmosphere Earth’s atmosphere

wipes away evidence of craters (wind and water erosion, earthquakes)

Burns up meteors

Impact Craters

Eye of Quibec Barringer Crater (AZ)

200 million years old 50,000 years old

Lunar Craters