1 / 7

Meteors, Meteoroids, Meteorites, and Comets

Meteors, Meteoroids, Meteorites, and Comets. By: LSchlick , AOrtiz , and JRodriguez. Definition. Meteor: A bright trail or streak that appears in the sky when a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by friction with the Earth’s atmosphere

suchin
Download Presentation

Meteors, Meteoroids, Meteorites, and Comets

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Meteors, Meteoroids, Meteorites, and Comets By: LSchlick, AOrtiz, and JRodriguez

  2. Definition Meteor: A bright trail or streak that appears in the sky when a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by friction with the Earth’s atmosphere Meteoroid: A piece of interplanetary matter that is smaller than a kilometer and frequently only millimeters in size Meteorite: When a meteoroid survives the fall through the Earth’s atmosphere and lands on Earth Comet: Asteroid-like objects covered with ice, methane, ammonia, and other compounds that develop a fuzzy, could-like shell called a coma and sometimes a visible tail whenever they orbit close to the Sun.

  3. Characteristics of Meteor • Size range is about a piece of dust to 10 meters in diameter • Easy to see at night • Meteor Showers are when many meteors are grouped together in one part of the sky • The worlds largest meteor is called Hoba. It weighed 60 tons and is 9’x9’x3’. It is thought to have fallen 80,000 years ago. It was 84% iron and 16% nickel. • As layers of the meteor ionizes, the color of light may change according to the layering of minerals. Possible colors: Orange/Yellow (sodium) Yellow (iron) Blue/Green (copper) Purple (potassium) Red (silicate)

  4. Characteristics of Meteoroids • A small rocky or metallic body traveling through space • Smaller than asteroids • Size from small grains to one meter wide • Most are fragments from comets or asteroids • They travel around the sun in a variety of orbits and velocities. • Fastest meteoroids move at about 42 km/s through space and the Earth travels at about 30 km/s

  5. Characteristics of Meteorites • A meteorites size can range from small to extremely large. • Meteorites are always named for the places they were found, usually near a town. • Some meteorites have a low density. • Iron meteorites are very dense. 7-8 g/cm3 • The three classes of meteorites are stony, iron, and stony-iron

  6. Characteristics of Comets • Small icy solar system that passes the sun • When it passes the sun it heats up and outgasses and displays visual atmosphere or coma • Coma is formed when the comet passes close to the sun on its highly elliptical orbit

  7. Size: size varies between different meteoroids General color and unique surface features: It is mostly rock How long is a day? n/a Density: n/a Gravity: n/a Atmosphere Composition: n/a Surface Composition: depends on the meteor Interior Composition: depends on the meteor Magnetic Field: n/a Moons: n/a Anything unique about this celestial body? It is all made of rock and can be made of type of rock and can vary from size.

More Related