COMETS

What Is A Comet?

interaction with the solar wind. The

plasma tail is not normally seen with
the naked eye, but can be imaged.
Comets normally orbit the Sun, and
have their origins in the Oort Cloud and
Kuiper Belt regions of the outer solar
system.

METEORS
A comet is a very small solar system
body made mostly of ices mixed with
smaller amounts of dust and rock. A
comet is an icy body that releases gas
or dust. They are often compared to
dirty snowballs, though recent research
has led some scientists to call them
snowy dirt balls. Comets contain dust,
ice, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane
and more. Astronomers think comets
are leftovers from the gas, dust, ice and
rocks that initially formed the solar
system about 4.6 billion years ago.
Some researchers think comets might
have originally brought some of the
water and organic molecules to Earth
that now make up life here.
When a comet is heated by the Sun, its
ices begin to sublimate (similar to the
way dry ice fizzes when you leave it in
sunlight). The mixture of ice crystals
and dust blows away from the comet
nucleus in the solar wind, creating a
pair of tails. The dust tail is what we
normally see when we view comets from
Earth. A plasma tail also forms when
molecules of gas are excited by

meteors appear in the sky. Perhaps the

most famous are the Perseids, which
peak around 12 August every year.
Every Perseid meteor is a tiny piece of
the comet Swift-Tuttle, which swings by
the Sun every 135 years. Other meteor
showers and their associated comets
are the Leonids (Tempel-Tuttle), the
Aquarids and Orionids (Halley), and the
Taurids (Encke). Most comet dust in
meteor showers burns up in the
atmosphere
before
reaching
the
ground; some dust is captured by highaltitude aircraft and analyzed in NASA
laboratories.

ASTEROIDS
Shooting stars, or meteors, are bits of
interplanetary material falling through
Earth's atmosphere and heated to
incandescence by friction. These objects
are called meteoroids as they are
hurtling
through
space,
becoming
meteors for the few seconds they streak
across the sky and create glowing trails.
Scientists estimate that 44 tonnes
(44,000 kilograms, about 48.5 tons) of
meteoritic material falls on the Earth
each day. Several meteors per hour can
usually be seen on any given night.
Sometimes
the
number
increases
dramatically - these events are termed
meteor showers. Some occur annually
or at regular intervals as the Earth
passes through the trail of dusty debris
left by a comet. Meteor showers are
usually
named
after
a
star
or
constellation that is close to where the

Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets,

are rocky remnants left over from the early
formation of our solar system about 4.6
billion years ago. Most of this ancient space
rubble can be found orbiting the sun
between Mars and Jupiter within the main
asteroid belt. Asteroids range in size from
Vesta - the largest at about 329 miles (530
kilometers) in diameter - to bodies that are
less than 33 feet (10 meters) across. . The
total mass of all the asteroids combined is
less than that of Earth's Moon. Most
asteroids are irregularly shaped, though a
few are nearly spherical, and they are often

pitted or cratered. As they revolve around

the sun in elliptical orbits, the asteroids
also rotate, sometimes quite erratically,
tumbling as they go. More than 150
asteroids are known to have a small
companion moon (some have two moons).
There are also binary (double) asteroids, in
which two rocky bodies of roughly equal
size orbit each other, as well as triple
asteroid
systems.
The
three
broad
composition classes of asteroids are C-, S-,
and
M-types.
The
C-type
(chondrite)
asteroids are most common, probably
consist of clay and silicate rocks, and are
dark in appearance. They are among the
most ancient objects in the solar system.
The S-types ("stony") are made up of
silicate materials and nickel-iron. The Mtypes
are
metallic
(nickel-iron).
The
asteroids' compositional differences are
related to how far from the sun they
formed.
Some
experienced
high
temperatures after they formed and partly
melted, with iron sinking to the center and
forcing basaltic (volcanic) lava to the
surface. Only one such asteroid, Vesta,
survives to this day.

This is one
small

step for a
man,
one GIANT
leap
for
mankind.
- Neil Armstrong

Nothing

like the
rain
when
youre in

outer
space.
- Unknown

SOLAR
SYSTEM
Submitted by:
Ronelyn S. Villena
8 Diamond
Submitted to:
Mrs. Jocelyn Tampon

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