Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Traditionally, small bodies orbiting the Sun were classified as comets, asteroids, or meteoroids, with anything smaller than one meter across being called a meteoroid. The term asteroid, never officially defined, [11] can be informally used to mean "an irregularly shaped rocky body orbiting the Sun that does not qualify as a planet or a dwarf ...
A meteorite is a portion of a meteoroid or asteroid that survives its passage through the atmosphere and hits the ground without being destroyed. [22] Meteorites are sometimes, but not always, found in association with hypervelocity impact craters; during energetic collisions, the entire impactor may be vaporized, leaving no meteorites.
Comet Encke's meteoroid trail is the diagonal red glow. Meteoroid trail between fragments of Comet 73P. A meteor shower results from an interaction between a planet, such as Earth, and streams of debris from a comet (or occasionally an asteroid). Comets can produce debris by water vapor drag, as demonstrated by Fred Whipple in 1951, [24] and
The largest asteroid, Ceres, is only about 600 miles wide. As space objects go, comets and meteors are not very big. The largest asteroid, Ceres, is only about 600 miles wide.
Most meteoroids are made of silicates and heavier metals like nickel and iron. [239] When passing through the Solar System, comets produce a trail of meteoroids; it is hypothesized that this is caused either by vaporization of the comet's material or by simple breakup of dormant comets.
Over the period 1864–1866 the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli computed the orbit of the Perseid meteors, and based on orbital similarities, correctly hypothesized that the Perseids were fragments of Comet Swift–Tuttle. The link between comets and meteor showers was dramatically underscored when in 1872, a major meteor shower ...
Comets whose aphelia are near a major planet's orbit are called its "family". [81] Such families are thought to arise from the planet capturing formerly long-period comets into shorter orbits. [82] At the shorter orbital period extreme, Encke's Comet has an orbit that does not reach the orbit of Jupiter, and is known as an Encke-type comet.
The Orionid meteor shower, courtesy of the famed Halley's Comet, is forecast to reach its peak in a matter of days, when it will send a flurry of bright and fast meteors shooting across the night sky.