Presentation is loading. Please wait.

Presentation is loading. Please wait.

Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors Section 14.5. Standard  6.e. Students know the appearance, general composition, relative position and size, and motion.

Similar presentations


Presentation on theme: "Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors Section 14.5. Standard  6.e. Students know the appearance, general composition, relative position and size, and motion."— Presentation transcript:

1 Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors Section 14.5

2 Standard  6.e. Students know the appearance, general composition, relative position and size, and motion of objects in the solar system.

3 Introduction  The sun, planets, and moons are the only objects in the solar system. There are other smaller objects moving through the solar system as well.

4 Comets  Comet: a “dirty snowball” about the size of a mountain.  Comets are loose collections of ice and dust, and small rocky particles whose orbits are usually very long, narrow ellipses.

5 Comets  A Comet’s Head  Clouds of gas and dust form a fuzzy outer layer called the coma.  Nucleus: the inner core of a comet  The brightest part is the nucleus and the coma

6 Comets  A Comet’s Tail  Comet means “long-haired star”  Has a gas and a dust tail. Gas tail is always away from the sun.

7 Comets  Origin of Comets  Kuiper Belt: doughnut shaped region that extends beyond Neptune’s orbit  Oort Cloud: spherical region of comets that surrounds the solar system

8 Asteroids  Asteroids are too small and too numerous to be considered planets or dwarf planets.  Most asteroids revolve around the sun in circular orbits between Mars and Jupiter.  Called the asteroid belt

9 Asteroids  Astronomer have found more than 100,000 asteroids.  They hypothesize these asteroids were leftover pieces of the early solar system that never came together to form a planet

10 Asteroids  Some asteroids have extremely elliptical orbits that cross paths with other planets. This is what happened with the dinosaurs. An asteroid in orbit hit earth, causing a mass extinction.

11 Meteors  When there is a meteor shower, you often see a meteor at least once every 10 minutes  Meteoroid is a chunk of rock or dust in space

12 Meteoroids  Meteoroids come from comets or asteroids  When a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere, it is called a meteor. It burns up and creates a streak in the sky (SHOOTING STAR.

13 Meteors  When meteoroids enter the atmosphere and strikes Earth’s surface, it is called a meteorite.


Download ppt "Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors Section 14.5. Standard  6.e. Students know the appearance, general composition, relative position and size, and motion."

Similar presentations


Ads by Google