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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 meteoroid shown entering the atmosphere, causing a visible meteor and hitting the Earth's surface, becoming a meteorite. A meteoroid (/ ˈ m iː t i ə r ɔɪ d / MEE-tee-ə-royd) [1] is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
A meteor, or shooting star is a streak of light caused by a meteoroid entering the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of several tens of kilometers per second, at an altitude of about 100 km. At this speed the meteoroid heats up and leaves a trail of excited atoms and ions which emit light as they de-excite.
The word comet derives from the Old English cometa from the Latin comēta or comētēs. That, in turn, is a romanization of the Greek κομήτης 'wearing long hair', and the Oxford English Dictionary notes that the term (ἀστὴρ) κομήτης already meant 'long-haired star, comet' in Greek.
As space objects go, comets and meteors are not very big. The largest asteroid, Ceres, is only about 600 miles wide. Fascinating recent discoveries about comets and meteors in our solar system
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
Meteoritics [note 1] is the science that deals with meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. [note 2] [2] [3] It is closely connected to cosmochemistry, mineralogy and geochemistry. A specialist who studies meteoritics is known as a meteoriticist. [4]
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets.