PRESENTATION OUTLINE
ASTEROIDS, COMETS, AND METEORS
What are comets made of and how long will it take to complete a full orbit? Comets are made from ice and rock?
Orbits can take hundreds of years to complete.
What do comets orbit and how to they orbit it?
Comets have an oval like orbit around the sun that can take less than or more than hundreds of years.
Comets are pieces of rock and ice that orbit the sun and have a tail running behind them and have a coma which happens when the comet is close to the sun, part of the comet sublimes which is why comets look fuzzy when you see a comet through a telescope.
What are the differences between meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids?
Meteoroids are pieces of rock debris floating around the solar system. A meteoroid that hits earths atmosphere is a meteor. A meteor that hits earth surface is a meteorite.
What are the different tails of a comet?
Comets have two tails. The first is a dust tail and the other is a gas tail. The sun melts the frozen gas which makes the gas tail. The comet orbits around the sun and when you can see it, it most commonly has both tails.
How big are meteorites when they reach earth?
A meteoroids size includes anything bigger than a marble and smaller than about 330 feet. Anything bigger is considered a asteroid.
What are meteors and how do they affect the earth?
A meteor is a meteoroid that burns while coming into the earth’s atmosphere. The meteor comes into the atmosphere it turns into a meteorite which hits the earth's surface. Many metals that are on earth came from meteors.
Which of the three hits the earth more often and how many times has it hit the earth?
Meteors hit the earth more often with thousands of meteors. Asteroids don't hit the earth because they turn into meteors when they enter the earth's atmosphere. Comets rarely hit the earth because they normally orbit the sun.
No meteors do not harm humans because when they hit the ground they are about pebble sized because they evaporate in the atmosphere.
Asteroids are rocks that are typically found in the asteroid belt, but some get knocked out or just orbit around the sun somewhere else. Some scientists believe asteroids came from planets that couldn't keep together and just fell apart, no matter where they came from, they can really differ in size, some are the size of pebbles, and others are as long as 300 miles!
What is the biggest asteroid in our solar system?
The largest asteroid ever found is the only one that can see without a telescope, the large and bright vesta!
Have any other asteroids come in contact with earth?
Asteroids are believed to end some some species, like dinosaurs and other Jurassic plants. One asteroid hit earth a long time ago, and supposedly ended the Cretaceous period, and around the same time the Permian period. One other asteroid only one tenth of a mile long hit earth in 1908 and shattered windows for miles, to me that's pretty impressive.