Asteroids, Meteors, Meteoroids, and Meteorites

1. Asteroids, Meteors, Meteoroids, and Meteorites

2. By:: Tyler Kelley Chris Sutton Chris Lyles

3. Asteroids • There are a vast number of asteroids earth orbits. Some are easier to get to than others. The potential mineral wealth of these asteroids is so great that people get huge profits off of it. Asteroids don’t have any moons. . The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a synoptic survey designed to explore the transient and variable sky in a wide variety of cadences. We use PTF observations of fields that were observed multiple times (>=10) per night, for several nights, to find asteroids, construct their light curves and measure their rotation periods. Here we describe the pipeline we use to achieve these goals and present the results from the first four (overlapping) PTF fields analyzed as part of this program. These fields, which cover an area of 21 deg^2, were observed on four nights with a cadence of ~20 min. Our pipeline was able to detect 624 asteroids.

4. Meteors A meteor shower is celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky. The biggest meteor rite weighed 32,000 pounds. Every hour one million meters hit the earths atmosphere.

5. Meteoroid • Meteoroids are small chunks of stone that are capable of intersecting Earths orbit. If a meteoroid enters the Earths atmosphere it is known as a meteor or a shooting star. If the meteor doesn’t entirely disintegrate.

6. Meteorites • Meteorites are naturally occurring objects that originate in space and survive a fall to the ground through Earth's atmosphere. Most are remnants of asteroids or possibly comets. However, a few have been shown to be pieces of Moon or Mars that were launched into space by an impact event. While moving through space these objects are known as meteoroids. The bright streaks that they produce while moving through Earth's atmosphere are known as a meteors.