Asteroids, Comets and Meteorites. By Jacob, Tamara, Cassidy.

Differences Comets - Small solar system body - Orbits Sun - Displays visible coma and sometimes a tail when close to sun Asteroids - Small solar system body - Orbits sun - Made of rock, metal, sometimes has organic compounds - Doesn’t have visible coma Meteor - Burns up as it enters Earth atmosphere - Known as a ‘shooting star’ when seen at night time. A coma is a fuzzy outline or atmosphere around a comet due to solar radiation

Asteroids Asteroids are small solar system bodies that orbit the sun. Asteroids are a rock and metal compound that can also contain some organic compounds. Asteroids are known as planetoids or minor planets and vary greatly in size. The first asteroid, discovered was in 1801 by an Italian astronomer by the name of Giuseppe Piazzi. The Asteroid belt roughly sits in between the orbits of mars and Jupiter in the solar system. It is believed by many scientists and researchers that an asteroid caused the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Comets Comets were born in the outer parts of the solar system 4600million years ago. Comets are small solar system bodies that orbit the sun. They come from the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud when they smash into eachother, changing direction. Largest comet discovered is about 40 km in diameter. 4,000 comets have been discovered in our solar system. They’re also known as ‘dirty snowballs’

Meteors > Meteors are a small rock or particle of debris in our solar system. > Vary in diameter and up to 10m in diameter.(Larger are Asteroids. Fastest speeds of 42km a second through solar system. Around 500 meteorites reach the Earths surface every year. Millions of mentors enter the earths atmosphere every day but burn up.

The End.