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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