Solar System Debris

1
Solar System Debris
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Classification of Meteorites
What is the origin of meteorites?
What is the origin of the particles that produce
a meteor shower?
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Stony, Stony-Iron, and Iron Meteorites
What are chondrules?
Under what circumstances were they formed?
What is the difference between a fall and a
find?
Why are most falls stony meteorites while most
finds are iron meteorites?
What are chondrules? What do we learn from the
presence of chondrules in a meteorite?
How do we know that the chondrules resulted from
material that cooled quickly?
4
Widmanstätten Patterns
What are Widmanstätten patterns? What do they
tell us about the origin of iron meteorites?
5
Willamette Meteorite largest (15.5 tons)
meteorite ever found in the United States
Discovered in 1902 by Ellis Hughs
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Barringer, Arizona(49,000 years)
How large was the meteorite that produced this
crater?
1.19 km
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Chicxulub, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico(65.0
million years)
Why is it believed that this impact was a
significant factor in the extinction of the
dinosaurs and many other species?
170 km
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Wolfe Creek, Australia( 300,000 years)
0.88 km
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Tunguska Event
What evidence indicates that this was caused by
the explosion of a stony asteroid with a diameter
of about 30 m?
Meteorite Impact Calculator
How much energy was released by this impact?
10
Car Hit by Meteorite (Peekskill, New York, 1992)
3 lb meteorite
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People Hit by Meteorites
On Tuesday, September 23,. 2003 at 400 pm, a
large meteorite hit a house in downtown New
Orleans. It entered through the roof and
shattered into pieces after hitting the ground.
The mass of the fragments recovered was about 20
kg.
This 14-year old girl was hit in the foot by a
meteorite in August, 2002.
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Meteorite Impact Damage
http//seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanet
s/meteorites.html
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Asteroids
Where is the asteroid belt? Why is there an
asteroid belt? What are the Kirkwood
gaps? What do the Kirkwood gaps, the Cassini
division, the 59-day rotation period of Mercury
have in common?
What are the Apollo-Amor objects?
How often is Earth hit by an Apollo object?
What happens to Earth when it is hit by one of
the larger Apollo objects?
What are Hirayama families?
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Trojan Asteroids
Where are the Trojan asteroids?
What maintains them in those locations?
Sun
60o
60o
L5
L4
Jupiter
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Ida and its Satellite Dactyl
53 km
Galileo, 1993
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Gaspra
16 km
Galileo, 1991
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Vesta
510 km
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Near Earth Asteroid Mathilde
59 km
NEAR, 1997
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Comets
Why does a comet have two tails?
How are a comets tails different from each other?
What is the difference between a comet and an
asteroid?
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Structure of a Comet
Nucleus
The Sun
Tail
Coma
What is the coma of a comet?
Size of nucleus ? Size of coma ? Length of
tail ?
Schwassmann-Wachmann 3
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Halleys Comet, 1986
What is the orbital period of Halleys comet?
Why do comets have such low densities?
Why do comets emit jets of gas and dust when they
are within a few AUs of the Sun?
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What happened to the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in
1994?
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Residue of SL9 Impacts on Jupiter
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What would be the effect of a comet fragement
impact on Earth?
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The Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt
What evidence implies the existence of the Oort
cloud?
What evidence implies the existence of the Kuiper
belt?
How are the orbits of comets from the Oort cloud
different from comets from the Kuiper belt?
Why dont the objects in the Oort cloud and in
the Kuiper belt just stay there?
Kuiper belt
What is the origin of the Oort cloud? What is
the origin of the Kuiper belt?
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Kuiper Belt
http//www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/kb.html
Red Orbits Plutinos. Blue Orbits Classical
Kuiper Belt Objects. Black Orbits SKBOs
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Kuiper Belt Object Observation
http//www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/kb.html