Minor Members of the Solar System

are icy celestial bodies leftover from the formation of the solar system

Comets

they are made up of frozen water vapor/gases

comets

have an orbital period longer than 200 years

Long period comets

are those that recur within 200 years

short period comet

Haileys Comet is a

short period comet

Comet Hale Bopp is a

long period comet

found in the colder, outer region of the Solar system

Comets

is an extension of the coma

dust tail

is made up of ionized gas

plasma tail

essentially makes up the entire comet, and has an icy composition

nucleus

are often referred to as dirty snowballs

comets

is narrower and carried straight outward from the sun

plasma tail

more diffused and is pushed away in a slight curve d

dust tail

an organization with 22 member states

The European Space Agency

located at the edge of the Solar System

Kuiper Belt

Surrounds the sun, planets, and the Kuiper Belt

Oort Cloud

insterstellar disc js beyond the orbit of neptune

Kuiper Belt

There are about ____ comets in the Kuiper Belt

100,000 comets

exrends to about 50,000 AU from the sun

Oort Cloud

Extends about 30 to 100 AU from the sun

Kuiper Belt

a giant spherical shell that surrounds the solar system, and is believed to contain trillions of comets

Oort Cloud

comets from the Oort cloud are mostly

long period comets

are small chunks of rock and debris in space

Meteoroids

are commonly called falling stars

Meteors

The big and unusally bright meteors are called

fireballs

a number of meteors can be observed in the night sky

Meteor shower

occurs when Earth encounters a stream of meteoroids traveling in the same direction and at almost the same speeds

meteor shower

got their name because the meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Orion

Orionoids

they survive the descent and land on earths surface as

meteorites

are made up mostly of iron-nickel metal

iron meteorites

mostly silicate materials

stony iron meteorites

knwon as plantetoids

asteroids

small chunks of metallic and rocky materials that orbit the sun in the same direction as the planets

Asteroids

majority of asteroids are found in the

Asteroid belt

located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter

asteroid belt

the size of asteroids range from

1 km to less than a 1000 km in a diameter

first asteroid ever discovered

Ceres

do not emit their own light

Asteroids