Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors


Most people misunderstand that asteroids, meteors, and comets can interchange and they are all bits of rocks or ice. Actually, they are really different.

Asteroids

Asteroids have diverse figures and sizes. Ceres, the largest asteroid is 580 miles across but the smallest asteroids are only one-tenth of that size. Some asteroids, as Mathilde, are just loosely held together, like piles of rubble. Other asteroids, like Kleopatra, are metallic in nature and are solid rock. Most of the asteroids round the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the Asteroid Belt.

Comets

The basis elements of Comets are ice and dust. When Comets get close enough to the sun, it will have a nucleus and grow tails. That is because the heat of the sun heats up the ice and vaporizes it. The gases fly off the comet and adsorb some dust. At the time Comets go though space; some of the gases are stripped of neutrons and blown back by the solar wind, forming the tail of the comet.


Meteors

In fact, Meteors are not stars. They are small piece of interplanetary dust that burn up when they slam into the atmosphere of the earth. When the earth goes though a field of dust that a comet has left, "meteor shower" will be happened. Most little pieces of rock or dust burn up completely but some one will survive and crash into the earth. These are called "meteorites."

The first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, is the largest asteroid known to date and is now classified as a dwarf planet. All others are currently classified as small solar system bodies. The vast majority of asteroids are found within the main asteroid belt, with elliptical orbits between those of Mars and Jupiter. It is thought that these asteroids are remnants of the protoplanetary disc, and in this region the accretion of planetesimals into a larger planet or planets during the formative period of the solar system was prevented by large gravitational perturbations by Jupiter. Some asteroids have moons or are found in co-orbiting pairs known as binary systems.