1. The Sun…Planets…Moons… What else is in the solar system?

2. Asteroids (Minor Planets)
Small rocky objects (round or irregular)
Elliptical orbits around Sun
There is a ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter known as the “Asteroid Belt”
Explanation: An asteroid with a moon! The robot spacecraft Galileo whose primary mission is to explore the Jupiter system, has encountered and photographed two asteroids during its long journey to Jupiter. The second asteroid it photographed, called Ida, was discovered to have a moon which appears as a small dot to the right of Ida in this picture. The tiny moon, named Dactyl, is about one mile across, while the potato shaped Ida measures about 36 miles long and 14 miles wide. Dactyl is the first moon of an asteroid ever discovered. The names Ida and Dactyl are based on characters in Greek mythology.
In this highest resolution view of the icy, rocky nucleus of comet Borrelly, (about 45 meters or 150 feet per pixel) a variety of terrains and surface textures, mountains and fault structures, and darkened material are visible over the nucleus's surface. This was the final image of the nucleus of comet Borrelly, taken just 160 seconds before Deep Space 1's closest approach to it. This image shows the 8-km (5-mile) long nucleus about 3417 kilometers (over 2,000 miles) away.

4. Comets (Dirty snowballs)
Made up mainly of loosely held dust and ice
Travel in a very long orbit around the Sun

5. As the comet approaches the Sun, it is warmed
As the comet approaches the Sun, it is warmed. Frozen material begins to melt and then evaporate from its surface becoming gases. These gases are pushed outward by the solar wind to produce a bright tail.
A comet’s tail can be MILLIONS of kilometers long and always points away from the Sun.

6. Meteors (Shooting Stars)
A lump of rock or metal that is trapped by Earth’s gravity and pulled down through Earth’s atmosphere.
As a meteor falls, it becomes hot and burns up causing a bright streak across the sky.
Most burn up before hitting the Earth.
Barringer Meteor Crater, Arizona
Meteor Crater is one of the youngest and best-preserved impact craters on Earth. The crater formed roughly 50,000 years ago when a 30-meter-wide, iron-rich meteor weighing 100,000 tons struck the Arizona desert at an estimated 20 kilometers per second. The resulting explosion exceeded the combined force of today's nuclear arsenals and created a 1.1-kilometer-wide, 200-meter-deep crater.

7. Meteorites A meteor that hits the Earth before it completely burns up
Can produce large craters
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