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 Tail 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 100x as far from the sun as Earth 9.2 billion miles from Sun Oort Cloud (Ort, like in “short”) Sphere-shaped area of comets 1,000x to 10,000x 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 Meteor Meteorites A chunk of rock or dust in space Formed by Comets breaking up Formed by Asteroids colliding Meteoroid 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.