comets, asteroids, and meteors
DESCRIPTION
Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors . What is a comet?. A comet is a small body which scientists sometimes call a planetesimal. They are made out of dust, rock, gas, and ____. They are kind of like a dirty _________. ice. snowball. Comets are made up of different parts. The nucleus - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Comets, Asteroids, and
Meteors
What is a comet?A comet is a small
body which scientists
sometimes call a planetesimal. They
are made out of dust, rock, gas,
and ____. They are kind of like a dirty
_________.
snowball
ice
Comets are made up of different parts. The nucleus The coma
The ion tail The dust tail
The hydrogen envelope
The nucleus is the frozen _______ of a comet’s head. It is composed
of ____, ____, and dust. The nucleus contains most of the
comet’s mass and measure about 10 miles across or less.
centerice
gas
The nucleus of Halley’s Comet
The ______ is a spherical blob of gas that __________ the nucleus of a comet. As the comet gets closer to the sun, the heat __________ some of the ice
and causes the comet to spew gas and dust particles into space.
coma
nucleusThe_________and the _______ form
the head of a comet.
surrounds
vaporizes
coma
The _________ is made of ___________ charged gas molecules that are being pushed away from the nucleus by the
solar _____. (The blue tail in the picture.)
ion tail electrically
wind
When a comet is approaching the Sun, the ion tail _______ the comet: when the comet is leaving of the Sun, the ion tail
_____. The tail fades as the comet moves far from the Sun.
The ion tail can be
well over 100 million km long.
trailsleads
The _________ develops when the comet is _____ the
Sun. This tail is made of small dust particles that have
evaporated from the nucleus and are
being pushed away from the comet. The tail _______
slightly due to the comet’s motion.
dust tailnear
curves
The tail can be up to 250 million km long, and is
most of what we see.
Comets are only visible
when they're _____ the sun
in their elliptical orbits.
Comet Hale Bopp showing its two tails.
Courtesy of NASA
near
http://www.astrographia.com/images/9.jpg
Hale-Bopp – The Great Comet of 1997
Surrounding the coma is an
invisible layer of __________ that has been released. It
is the ___________________ . This cannot be seen from Earth because its light is absorbed by our atmosphere. It is usually between the ion tail and the
dust tail.
hydrogen
hydrogen envelope
Can you identify the following parts of a comet?
1.
2.3.
4.
5.
Ion tail
NucleusComa
Hydrogen envelope
Dust cloud
Comets orbit the Sun in highly _________ orbits. Their speed _________ greatly when they are near the Sun
and ______ down at the far reaches of the orbit. Since the comet is light only
when it is near the Sun, comets are dark throughout most of their orbit.
ellipticalincreases
slows
Comets originate from either the _______ _____ (beyond the orbit of
Neptune) or the ___________ (which surrounds the outer reaches of the
solar system.)
KuiperBeltOort Cloud
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/5354-the-small-pieces-comets-video.htm
Videos on Comets
http://www.brainpop.com/science/space/comets/
http://www.kidsastronomy.com/comets.htm
Animation of a Comet
ASTEROIDS Asteroids are _______ or _________
objects, also know as____________ or minor planets that revolve around
our Sun.
rocky metallicplanetoi
ds
Most asteroids orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt located between
_______ and _________. A few asteroids approach the Sun more closely. The asteroids in the asteroid belt have a slightly __________ orbit.
JupiterMars
elliptical The time for one revolution around the Sun
varies from about _________
Earth years3 to 6
Asteroids range in size from tiny pebbles to about 578 miles (930
kilometers) in diameter. Sixteen of the 3,000
known asteroids are over
150 miles (240 km)
in diameter.
• Asteroid Ceres• Diameter of
590miles (950 km)• Largest asteroid
and only dwarf planet in the inner
Solar System • Asteroid Vesta• Diameter of 326 miles (525
km)• Brightest
asteroid visible from the Earth.
Some asteroids even have orbiting ______. Here is the asteroid “243 Ida”
and its tiny asteroid moon, Dactyl. This is the first asteroid ever found
with an orbiting moon. Ida's dimensions are about 35 x 15 x 13 miles. Dactyl is only about 1 mile
across.
moons
METEOROIDS, METEORS, and METEORITES
Meteoroids are ______ bodies that travel through space. Most meteoroids are smaller than the size of a ________. Meteoroids are tiny particles left by an
asteroid or a comet.
pebble
small
A meteor is a meteoroid that has entered the _____________________,
usually making a fiery trail as it falls. It is sometimes called a _________ star or
a _______ star.
Earth’s atmosphere
shooting falling
A meteor shower is a phenomenon in which ______ meteors fall
through the atmosphere in a relatively ______ time and in
approximately parallel trajectories.
Arizona, November 1966 - The Leonid meteor shower rained 2,300 meteors per
minute for 20 minutes. (Photo NASA)
manyshort
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/903546/time_lapse_of_the_perseid_meteor_shower_geminid/
Video of meteor Shower
A meteorite is a meteor that has fallen and ______ the Earth. These rare objects have survived a fiery fall
through the Earth's atmosphere and have lost a lot of mass during that
process.
struck
Animation on the formation of this crater. http://www.meteorcrater.com/
Near Winslow, Arizona, you can visit a crater that was made from a meteorite. The crater is nearly one mile across, 2.4
miles in circumference, and more than 500 feet deep.
http://www.kidsastronomy.com/images/comet2.gifhttp://www.kidsastronomy.com/comets.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/comet_worldbook.htmlhttp://www.explanet.info/Chapter14.htm
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RESOURCES
http://www.sen.com/feature/space-rocks-comets-asteroids-meteorites-and-more.htmlhttp://dustyloft.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/asteroids_comets_sc_0-000-075.pnghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Meteoroid_meteor_meteorite.gif
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http://www.meteorcrater.com/