The Not So Noticed Solar System

AsteroidsComets

Astronomy is looking up---Anonymous

Asteroids

Asteroids

Asteroids

The name 'Asteroid' was given by Sir William Herschel in 1802, shortly after they were discovered. It means 'like a star' in Greek. Asteroids are also known as minor planets.

Gaspra

Asteroids

Asteroids are small fragments of rock, not large enough to be classified as Planets. About 2,500 of these have been catalogued and they range from metres in diameter to hundreds of kilometres wide - although only about 250 have diameters of over 100km, most tend to be about 1km across.

Asteroids

The largest asteroid is Ceres (940 km in diameter).

92.8% of all the asteroids examined were found to be made of stone

5.7% were made from a mixture of Nickel and Iron

Asteroids

tendency to have irregular shapes, like pebbles and some of them actually have their own little moons

Most asteroids are found in the Asteroid Belt which is in an elliptical orbit round the Sun, between Mars and Jupiter about 2.2 to 3.3 AU from the Sun

Ida and its moon Dactyl

Asteroids

some are found inside Earth's own orbit

Quite a few also get knocked out of the belt

one theory suggests that the dinosaurs were wiped out when an asteroid or comet hit the Earth near the Yucatan peninsula

Comets

Many people think that comets were huge balls of fire. In fact, they're solid, frozen, lifeless cosmic icebergs

when they get hot enough as they approach the sun and the nucleus unfreezes, a coma develops and the gas inside absorbs ultraviolet light, giving it a bright blue look

Comet Hale-Bopp

Comet Hale-Bopp

Comets

Comets with short periodicity originate from the Kuiper belt and those with long periodicity originate from the Oort Cloud

Comets

When they are near the Sun and active, comets have several distinct parts:

Nucleus: relatively solid and stable, mostly ice and gas with a small amount of dust and other solids;

Coma: dense cloud of water, carbon dioxide and other neutral gases sublimed off of the nucleus;

Comets Hydrogen Cloud: huge (millions of km in

diameter) but very sparse envelope of neutral hydrogen;

Dust Tail: up to 10 million km long composed of smoke-sized dust particles driven off the nucleus by escaping gases; this is the most prominent part of a comet to the naked eye;

Ion Tail: up to 100 million km long composed of plasma and laced with rays and streamers caused by interactions with the solar wind.

CometsNucleus of Comet Halley

Coma

Comet Halley

Ion tail

Dust tail

Comet Halley

Zodiacal Light

The zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular shaped glow of light extending away from Sun

It is merely sunlight reflected by dust in the plane of the ecliptic

Zodiacal Light

In September and October, because the ecliptic is more nearly perpendicular to the horizon at sunrise, the zodiacal light extends more nearly vertically from the horizon and we have a better opportunity to see it shortly before sunrise than when it lies along the horizon and is lost in the dust and haze of Earth's atmosphere.

Zodiacal LightZodiacal light

Zodiacal Light

Zodiacal light

Gegenschein

German for "counter-glow“ The gegenschein is a faint spot of light

in the sky, diametrically opposite Sun. The gegenshein is even fainter than the

zodiacal light -- fainter than the Milky Way -- so any additional light from Moon, street lights, or a nearby planet and any obscuring haze make it impossible to seethis faint glow

Gegenschein

Cometary dust and dust generated by collisions among the asteroids are believed responsible for the maintenance of the dust cloud producing the zodiacal light and the gegenschein.

Fireball