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Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors

Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors. Comets. Comets are loose collection of ice, dust, and small rocky particles whose orbits are usually very long, and narrow ellipses. Comets Head. When a comet gets close to the sun the heat from the sun turns the ice into gas. This releases gas and dust.

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Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors

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  1. Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors

  2. Comets • Comets are loose collection of ice, dust, and small rocky particles whose orbits are usually very long, and narrow ellipses.

  3. Comets Head • When a comet gets close to the sun the heat from the sun turns the ice into gas. This releases gas and dust. • Clouds of gas and dust form a fuzzy outer layer called a coma. • The brightest part of a comet is its head. The head is made up of the nucleus and the coma.

  4. Comet’s Tail • As the comet heats up some of the gas and dust stream outward forming a tail. • Most comets have two tails. One tail is gas and the other is dust. • A comet’s tail can be more than 100 million kilometers long and stretch across most of the sky. • Comet Activity

  5. Comet’s Origin • Most comets are found in one of two regions. The Kuiper belt-a doughnut-shaped region that extends from beyond Neptune’s orbit to about 100 times the Earth’s distance from the sun. • Oort Cloud- a spherical region of comets that surrounds the solar system out to more than 1,000 times the distance between Pluto and the sun.

  6. Asteroids • Rocky objects that revolve around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. • They are typically small-less than a kilometer in diameter. • Asteroids have very elliptical orbits that bring them closer to the sun than the earths orbit.

  7. Meteors • Have you ever seen a falling star? • What you saw was probably not a star. It was actually a meteor. • A meteor is a chunk of rock or dust in space. They come from comets or asteroids. • When the earth passes through a dust cloud then some of these bits of dust enter the Earth’s atmosphere. • When an meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere, friction with the air creates heat and produces a streak of light in the sky- a meteor. • If the meteoroid is large enough, it may no bur up completely. Meteoroids that pass through the atmosphere and hit the Earth are called meteorites. • Go outside tonight and watch the stars. Watch for meteors. On average, a meteor streaks overhead every 10 minutes.

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