Scribd
Upload
10 views

Comets_Asteroids_and_Meteors (1)

Uploaded by

floppasupremacy45
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
10 views

Comets_Asteroids_and_Meteors (1)

Uploaded by

floppasupremacy45
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 34

Comets,

Asteroids, and
Meteors
Comets
• The word "comet" comes from the Greek
word, kome for "hair”. Kometes means
“long-haired star”
• Our ancestors thought comets were stars
with what looked like flowing hair trailing
behind.
Comets: “Dirty Snowballs”
• Comets are loose collections of ice, dust,
and small rocky particles whose orbits are
usually very long, narrow ellipses.
Structure of a Comet
A Comet’s Head
– Outer layer= Coma (water vapor, CO2,
and other gases)
– Solid inner core= Nucleus (frozen
ice, gas and dust )
Structure of a Comet
Ion Tail

Dust
Tail

Coma

To Sun
Comet’s Tail
• As a comet approaches the sun and heats
up, some of its gas and dust stream
outward, forming a tail.
• Most comets have 2 tails:
– gas (ion), tail
– dust tail
• Tails point away from the sun because of
the force of the solar wind.
• A comet’s tail can be more than 100 million
kilometers long.
Comet’s Tail
Comet’s Orbit
• Comets move in an elliptical shaped orbit.
Origin of Comets
• Formed from the cold gases and ices in the
Solar nebula, FAR from the proto-sun
• Most comets are found in 2 regions of the
solar system: Kuiper belt and Oort cloud.
• Kuiper belt-doughnut-shaped region that
extends beyond Neptune’s orbit to about
100 times Earth’s distance from the sun.
• Oort cloud-spherical region of comets that
surrounds the solar system out to more than
1,000 times the distance between Pluto and
the sun.
The Oort Cloud

 In 1950 Jan Oort noticed that


 nocomet has been observed with an orbit that
indicates that it came from interstellar space,
 there
is a strong tendency for aphelia of long period
comet orbits to lie at a distance of about 50,000 AU,
and
 there
is no preferential direction from which comets
come.
The Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt

Our solar system has a LOT more comets than asteroids because
the Solar nebula had a LOT more gas than dust!
Famous Comets

• Comet Halley is perhaps the most famous comet


in history.
• Each time this comet's orbit approaches the Sun,
its 15-km (9-mile) nucleus sheds about 6 m (7
yards) of ice and rock into space. This debris
forms an orbiting trail that, when falling to Earth,
cause the Aquarids and the Orionids meteor
showers.
• Halley’s comet reappears every 76 years. Its next
appearance is in 2061.
Comet Halley
Bayeux Tapestry
Norman Invasion of 1066
Comet Hale-Bopp
• July 23, 1995- an
unusually large and bright
comet was seen outside of
Jupiter's orbit by Alan
Hale of New Mexico and
Thomas Bopp of Arizona.
• Exceptionally large size.
• It was visible even
through bright city skies,
and may have been the
most viewed comet in
recorded history.
• It will not appear again for
another 2,400 years.
Hale-Bopp
Other Famous Comets
• Comet Hyakutake-On January 30, 1996, Yuji Hyakutake
(pronounced "hyah-koo-tah-kay"), an amateur astronomer
from southern Japan, discovered a new comet using a pair
of binoculars.
• Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9-Between July 16 and July 22,
1994, more than 20 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy
9 collided with the planet Jupiter. Astronomers Carolyn
and Eugene Shoemaker and David Levy discovered the
comet in 1993. It was the first collision of two Solar
System bodies ever to be recorded.
Comet Exploration
Deep Impact
• Dec. 2004 - NASA mission
• impacted comet Tempel 1 on July 4,
2005
Rosetta (and Philae)
• Launched March 2004 by the European
Space Agency
• Controlled landing on comet 67P -
Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWxijOjmn-g
Asteroids

• A rocky space object. Rocky planetesimals.


• Formed from the relatively small amount of
dust in the Solar nebula.
• Large range of sizes, but they’re usually larger
than meteoroids.
• Most asteroids are found in the asteroid belt.
• The asteroid belt is located between the orbits of
Mars and Jupiter.
How many asteroids are there?
• There are about 40,000 known asteroids that are
over 0.5 miles (1 km) in diameter in the asteroid
belt About 3,000 asteroids have been cataloged.
• There are many smaller asteroids (100,000).
• Asteroids are made of metals, silicate, iron, nickel,
and carbon.
• The first one discovered (and the biggest) is
named Ceres; it was discovered in 1801.
• Asteroids range in size from tiny pebbles to about
578 miles (930 kilometers) in diameter (Ceres).
ASTEROIDS BECOMING MOONS
• Asteroids can be pulled out of their solar
orbit by the gravitational pull of a planet.
They would then orbit that planet instead of
orbiting the Sun.
• Astronomers theorize that the two moons of
Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are captured
asteroids.
Asteroid Strike

• Scientists hypothesize that a large asteroid


hit Earth 65 million years ago and caused
extinction of many animal species on
Earth, including the dinosaurs.
• Scientists have also hypothesized that the
largest mass extinction, 250 million years
ago, killing off 90% of all species may
have partially been caused by a large
asteroid.
Asteroid Exploration
• Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous- (NEAR)
mission is the first of NASA's Discovery missions
and the first mission ever to go into orbit around
an asteroid (launched 1996).
• Studies were made of the asteroid Eros’ size,
shape, mass, magnetic field, composition, and
surface and internal structure (last data signals
sent in 2001)
Meteoroids

• Meteoroid- small chunk of rock or dust that


is within the Earth’s orbital path.
• Meteoroids come from comets or asteroids.
Meteor

• When a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere,


friction with the air creates heat and produces a
streak of light that you can see in the sky.
• A meteor is the streak of light that is produced
when a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere and
burns up.
• A meteor shower occurs when many meteors can
be seen over a short period of time.
Meteor showers are named for the constellation
from which the meteors appear to be originating.

https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-
calendar/
The Cause of Meteor Showers
Meteorites
• Meteoroids that pass through the
atmosphere and hit Earth’s surface are
called meteorites.
• Classified by composition: stony, iron ,or
stony-iron.
Near Earth Objects (NEO)
What can we do if a large comet, meteoroid or
asteroid is in Earth’s path?
• Unknown… Still experimenting with ideas.
• We are more interested in calculating ways to use energy to divert
an incoming object
– Nuclear explosion to slow down or push object away (meh. Last
resort, maybe)
– Gravitational tractor – use gravity of tractor to guide it away
– Hypervelocity Asteroid Impact Vehicle (DART Mission Sept.
2022) – slam HAIV into asteroid to slightly change its path
– Laser deflectors (large beams and “laser bees”)
• High energy x-ray pulses produce a shock wave to push the NEO in
the opposite direction.

You might also like