Solar System Debris

1
Solar System Debris

• Minor Planets
• Meteoroids, Meteors, Meteorites
• Asteroid Belt
• Comets

2
Minor Planets

• Also called asteroids
• Name implies their stature as objects that orbit
  the sun
• Typically less than 1000 kilometers in diameter

3
Meteoroids, Meteors, Meteorites

• A meteoroid is an interplanetary chunk of matter
  smaller than an asteroid
• A meteor is the phenomenon of a streak in the sky
  caused by the burning of a rock or dust particle
  as if falls
• A meteorite is an interplanetary chunk of matter
  that has struck a planet or moon.

4
Asteroid Belt

• Located between Mars and Jupiter
• Asteroids are any of the thousands of minor
  planets that orbit the Sun

5
Comets

• Kuiper Belt is a band of comets hypothesized to
  exist closer to the solar system than the Oort
  cloud.
• Oort Cloud is the theorized spherical shell of
  space that lies between 10,000 AU to 100,000 AU
  from the Sun which contains a large number of
  comet nuclei

6
Anatomy of a Comet

• Nucleus -- loosely packed dust and ice 10 km in
  diameter, 1014 kg in mass
• Coma -- The nebulous region surrounding the
  nucleus 105 km in diameter near the Sun
• Tail -- produced by the Sun ionizing the nucleus.
  The ion tail always points away from the Sun.
  The dust tail also points away from the sun, but
  is influenced by the direction of motion, too.