A comet is categorized as an icy body that discharges gas or dust. Most comets that are visible from earth seem to travel in long ovals around the sun. Comets consist of a nucleus which is bounded by fuzzy or cloudy atmosphere and it might have a tail or two. The gases in the comet’s coma and tail are bright reflective so that allows us to see comets a lot better when they are closer to the sun. Astronomers also trust that comets release the energy they store from the sun causing them to glow.
Astronomers trust that comets are leftovers of ice, rocks and gas from what shaped the planets billions of years ago. They also trust comets are strongly linked to life on earth, bringing some of the water and carbon based molecules that fuels life on soil.
When astronomers reflect about the nucleus of the comet they reflect about a dirty snowball. It’s basically a ball of ice and rocky dust particles. The coma forms when the sun comes nearer to the sun and some of the ice gets vaporized forming the cloudy dust around the comet. The sun’s radiation also pushes the dust particles away from the comet and that’s how the tail is shaped. Each time a comet orbits and come to the inner circle of the Solar system it melts a bit more s eventually some of the comets will be unable to find completely melt.
Astronomers categorize comets into two groups. Short and long period comets due to the time they take to orbit the sun. Short period comets take less than two hundred years while long period comets take two hundred or more years. Astronomers doubt that short-period comets come from the Kuiper belt which is basically a band of objects close to Pluto’s orbit. They believe that the gravitational pull of the planets can cause an object to be ...
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...d close-range reflection where space probes fly within close ranges of the asteroids and collect detailed data.
It is also a continuing theory that perhaps an asteroid crashed into earth which caused a climatic and environmental changes causing dinosaurs are extinct. The asteroid is trusted to have made a huge depression in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Asteroids are categorized into a number of types according to their spectra. C-type, includes more than seven five percent of known asteroids: tremendously dark; similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites; approximately the same chemical arrangement as the Sun minus hydrogen, helium and other volatiles; S-type, seventeen percent: relatively bright; metallic nickel-iron assorted with iron- and magnesium-silicates; M-type, most of the rest: bright; pure nickel-iron. There are also a dozen or so additional rare types.
However, asteroids are much more deadly. If over-sized meteor can wreck buildings and injure people, then a normal sized asteroid can easily wipe out species if it lands in the right place. As mentioned before, asteroids are much bigger than meteor and much more rare. According to the “Mail Online” 12,000 years ago some type of asteroid slammed into the Northern Canada and some scientist believe that wiped off the mammoths and caused the “Younger Dryas”. Another famous event of asteroids striking, that many scientist believe, was around 65 million years ago asteroids rained and killed of all the dinosaurs 75% of all the life on earth.
Chondrites give geologists insights on the makeup of the early solar system. Geologists are driven by understanding how the Earth came to be what it is today. Chondrites formed at the time o
A comet is a small icy body that travels in an elliptical orbit around the sun. Halley’s Comet, or 1P/Halley, is the most well-known “periodic” comet that orbits the solar system and returns to Earth’s vicinity approximately every seventy-six years. It is one of the only comets that can be seen from Earth that is visible to the naked-eye, and can appear twice in one’s lifetime. The comet’s last visit was in the year 1986, and it is calculated to return mid-2061.
The Kuiper Belt is an icy-bodied disc shapes area of the Solar System. Kuiper Belt has a circular shape, to be exact, it is a curved plane. It is over 4.5 to 7.4 billion kilometers from Sun. This is roughly 30 to 50 times the distance of Earth from Sun. The Kuiper Belt has been said to resemble the Asteroid Belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. The difference between the Kuiper Belt and the Asteroid Belt is that the bodies are icier due to their distance from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt objects includes Pluto and other comets that orbit beyond Neptune. Most Kuiper Belt objects are made up of frozen volatiles such as methane, water and ammonia. In 1950 astronomer Gerald Kuiper predicted the existence of the Kuiper Belt and the find was named
Europe. In 1577 he proved that the orbit of the comet of 1577 did lay beyond
Not all meteors are the same material wise. Some meteors are made out of rock, while others are made out of iron. Some even have a mixture of both, but in most cases, it is one or the other.
The universe is a shooting gallery and earth is the bullseye. The earth is always under threat of a doomesday asteroid that will wipe out civilization. There are over one thousand asteroids traveling toward earth and only three quarters are accounted for. Where are the other one forth? No one knows because the government doesn't fund NASA astrologists enough to cover the astroids. Just one impact could end civilization as we know it. No matter where it hits everything would die, even bacteria. To give an estimate how much is spent on asteroid detection. It is said to be less than the cost to operate a single McDonald's franchise. Total disaster would occur no matter where the asteroid hit. Land, sea it doesn't matter. Ocean impact would create a number of things. First, a Tsunami(tidal wave) would be created on impact. The wave would be hundreds for feet high traveling hundreds of miles per hour. It would start to slow down crashing ashore through all coastal city. Then, finally wash up hundreds for miles inland. " The mid-Atlantic Ocean impact ranging from 400 meters to 5 kilometers in diameter. This would generate a tsunami that would sweep across the upper East Coast of the United States to the Appalachian Mountains."(Gottschalk 1) The blast of the impact would equal a 300 gigaton blast of T.N.T. Also, 2.4 seconds after impact, a small fireball with a temperature of 5000'C would sweep across long island. A land fall strike would cause total divistation. The asteroid would create a earth trembling impact causing earth quakes around the world. The binding flash will show impact and the crater would be twenty miles across. Then, a blanket of dust and debris would blanket the earth and block the sun's light. This would occur for hundreds of years and the climate would be disrupted. Global killer no matter where it hits. The end of the world is only 28 years, 10 months, 19 days, 1 hour, 45 minutes, and 39 seconds away. An asteroid named XF11 is on route to hit earth directly. October is the month and 2038 is the year. Discovered by Jim Scotti on December 6, 1997 while looking at star with the Arizona Spacewatch Group. The asteroid "is predicted to pass at a rather comfortable distance of about 600,000 miles (about 960,000 kilometers) in 2028," "reported Dr. Donald K.
Pluto's rotation period is 6.387 days, the same as its satellite Charon. Although it is common for a satellite to travel in a synchronous orbit with its planet, Pluto is the only planet to rotate synchronously with the orbit of its satellite. Thus being tidally locked, Pluto and Charon continuously face each other as they travel through space.
The data was taken in order to assist scientists in understanding better about things like an asteroid near Earth, such as their size, density, makeup, rotation, and more. Information such as this can help in forming a possible planetary defense against an asteroid near
Scientists get a good idea of what asteroids are made of by studying them through telescopes. They can tell what an asteroid is made of by the color and brightness of the asteroid. A lot of asteroids that we have discovered are very dark and made of stone, but there are shiny ones that are made of nickel and iron.
Out of all the phenomena that occur within our galaxy, comets are one of the most amazing. Being the most well-known, it’s safe to say that when talking about these small bodies, Halley’s Comet comes to mind. Even though it only graces us with its presence about once every 75 years, Halley’s Comet continues to astonish us to this day. Despite centuries of observation, there is still much to learn about comets. Comets consist of three main parts: the tail, coma, and nucleus.
The last of the features of the comet are the tails. Most comets have two tails. One tail is made from dust particles and the other, called ion tail, is made gases. As a comet approaches the sun, the frozen gas becomes unfrozen which causes the dust particles to become free. Light pressure from the sun and some other forces cause these materials to move away from the head of the comet and in the opposite direction from the sun. According to Charles A. Schweighauser in his book, entitled Astronomy from A to Z: A Dictionary of Celestial Objects and Ideas, he states that we see comet heads and tails because they not only reflect sunlight, but they also fluoresce—give off their own light—when comets are near the sun. The tails from the comet may be up to 150 million kilometers long each or together.
15MS03 7th Grade Summary Conclusion The different technologies and techniques investigated for diverting asteroids from hitting the earth
As Colby Navarro sat at his computer on March 26, 2003, he had no idea that a meteorite was about to come crashing through the roof of his Park Forest, Illinois, home, strike his printer, bounce off the wall, and land near a filing cabinet. The rock, about four inches wide, was part of a meteorite shower that swept through the Chicago area, damaging at least six houses and three cars. Scientists said that before the rock broke apart, it was probably the size of a car. Thank heaven for small favors.
Though most people have heard about Comets and Asteroids many are unware of what they are and more significantly, their importance to life itself. Comets and asteroids are often described as small planets differentiating in sizes, some are baseball-sized meteors while some others are about one third the size of the moon. Other common terms used to describe them are rocky and icy bodies left over from the formation of the solar system. According to Don Yeomans from the Propulsion Lab, “Initially there was a great number of Comets and Asteroids, however, most of these bodies have either collided together and formed some of the major planets, were ejected from the inner solar system into the Oort cloud, or were ejected out of the solar system altogether.” Therefore, the Comets and Asteroids we see today are the residual population. One basic question to ask is why should we study Comets and Asteroids?