Comets Asteroids and Meteors Chapter 14 Section 5

Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors Chapter 14 Section 5

Comets Think of: Dirty Snowball Literally means: “long-haired star” • Loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles • Orbit in long, narrow ellipses

Comets Structure of a comet: • Head • Nucleus – inner solid core • Coma – could of gas and dust • Tail • Gas Tail (Points away from the sun) • Dust Tail • Up to 62 million miles long

Where do comets come from? The Kuiper Belt (K-eye-per) • Donut shaped region beyond Neptune • Short, Circular Orbit • 100 x as far from the sun as Earth • 9. 2 billion miles from Sun Oort Cloud (Ort, like in “short”) • Sphere-shaped area of comets 1, 000 x to 10, 000 x farther from the sun than pluto • Long Orbit • At least 4 trillion miles from Sun

Asteroids • • • Too small to be planets Less than 1 mile in diameter Too many to be planets 100, 000+ discovered Ceres, Pallas, Vesta are the largest 500 -mile diameter Elliptical orbits that could hit Earth! Theorized that an asteroid DID hit Earth 65 million years ago. . .

Asteroid Belt • Orbit between Mars and Jupiter • What does this separate? Draw a line between?

Meteoroid • A chunk of rock or dust in space • Formed by Comets breaking up • Formed by Asteroids colliding Meteor • Enters Earth’s Atmosphere • Friction with air causes heat and light • Streaks through the sky Meteorites • Pass through Earth’s atmosphere • Hit Earth’s surface • Craters on the moon caused by meteorites

Answer the question using pictures!

Answer the question using pictures!

Answer the question using pictures!

Match the words.