OTHER OBJECTS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
What Is a Meteor, Meteorite, and a Meteoroid? How Are They Different?
A comet is an object that "flies" through outer space at certain speeds and goes in an elliptical orbit around an object like the Sun. Some of the most famous comets include Halley's Comet, which was discoveredby Edmund Halley. Halley's Comet was named after Halley because of how he discovered how the comet returns every 76 years or so.Because of this he founded the highly anticipation of Comets returning that is still done today.The last known returning of Halley's Comet was in 1986. A comet is formed from many ice particles coming together to form a substance that is closly packed together that becomes a comet. A comet is formed of the head, which is the large round ball part of the comet. The tail, which is a long stream of rock and ice particles, and the corona, which surrounds the head is formed of small rock, dust, and ice particles. Most comets that we have seen come from a cloud of debris surrounding our solar system called the Oort Cloud.
An asteroid is a big chunk of rock that floats in space and moves slowly. After the fourth planet of the Solar System, Mars, there is a large Asteroid Belt that is a border from the first four planets of the Solar System to the last five planets of the Solar System. The Asteroid Belt is where most of the known asteroids reside and stay there unless they are knocked out of the belt by something moving like a comet or possibly a gravitational pull by Jupiter. After is is knocked out of the belt, it will probably just float around in space until it collides with something such as a planet. Asteroids are formed by clumps of large space dust forced together by gravity.
What Is a Meteor, Meteorite, and a Meteoroid? How Are They Different?
Meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids are all the same thing except at different stages. A meteoroid is a piece of rock or ice that floats through space. It can be as small as a pea, to as large as a mile-wide rock or asteroid.When a meteoroid makes contact and enters the Earth's atmosphere it is then called a meteor.Meteors are usually small because they are burning up in the atmosphere.A meteor shower is when a group of meteors shoots through the sky. Meteor showers are oftenly calles shooting stars. Occasionally, a meteor is large enough to survive the atmosphere and make contact with Earth's surface. When a meteor collides with the surface of the Earth it then is called a meteorite. Meteorites leave impact craters that can be huge. There are three types of meteorites that fall to Earth up to ten times a day. They are: Stones, or aeroliths, consisting of stone made from materials not found on Earth, Irons, or siderites, consisting of metals such as iron and nickel, and stony-irons, which consist of both stone and iron.
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