Proficiency 6:
Proficiency 6:
Meteors, Asteroids,
Comets and Moons
Comets
They are made up of ice and dust particles and as they become closer to the sun, the comet grows an ion tail.
The tail is created because of the ice inside the comet. As the ice nears the sun the heat of the sun(solar wind) makes the ice that comes from the nucleolus vaporize. The little bits of rock get blown off the comet creating a second tail called the "dust tail". As the comet enters the inner planets, the ion tail points straight away from the sun because, the solar wind is pushing the ice and dust straight away.
Ice makes the difference between comets and meteors and asteroids because comets are the only of those three that contain ice particles in it.
A comet orbits around the sun in an ellipse, but instead of the sun being in the middle of the comets orbit, the sun is on one side of the comet's orbit.
The largest asteroid is Ceres, which is 580 miles across. At the moment, the smallest asteroid observed is 10 meters in size, but there are most likely smaller asteroids, that are just too small to be detected.
Asteroids orbit the sun in the space between Mars and Jupiter called the Asteroid Belt.
the difference between asteroids, meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites
A small asteroid is called a meteoroid. When it enters the Earth's atmosphere it turns into a meteor. The meteor hits the land and it becomes a meteorite. In reality, an asteroid is a meteor, the only difference, is that it all depends on whether it is in space or the Earth's atmosphere.
Meteors are small pieces, about the size of a pea, of dust from the inner planets that start to burn when they enter an atmosphere.
Unlike comets and asteroids, moons do not orbit around the gravitational pull of the sun. They move like a satellite, orbiting around a planet.