STELLAR OBJECTS

RINGS OF THE GAS GIANTS• Saturn has the most obvious rings;

consists of billions of pieces of rocks and ice ranging from dust to house size objects• Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also

have very small rings

ASTEROIDS• A small, rocky object that orbits the sun• most asteroids are located in a band

between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter• orbit in elliptical orbits• Ceres so large and a sphere it has been

classified a dwarf planet

ASTEROIDS

Classified by Composition:1. Carbon Materials2. Silicate Materials3. Iron and Nickel

ASTEROIDS• Asteroid Belt: Located in between

Mars and Jupiter, could not be made into a planet due to Jupiter’s gravitational pull• Trojan Asteroids: Group of asteroids

that can be found in front of and behind Jupiter’s gravitational pull

COMETS

• A small body of rock, ice, cosmic dust that follows a highly elliptical orbit around the sun that gives off gas and dust in the form of a tail as it passes close to the sun

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “SMALL BODY”?

COMET COMPOSITION1. Nucleus/Core: made of rock, metal, and

ice, 1km to 100km in diameter2. Coma: cloud of gas and dust around the

nucleus, can extend 1 million km out3. Tail: Caused by ice changing to gas,

pushed away from core by solar winds thus tail only points away from sun up to 80 million km long

Oort Cloud: A spherical region that surrounds the solar system, extends from the Kuiper Belt to almost halfway to the nearest star, and contains billions of cometsKuiper Belt: A region of the solar system that starts just beyond the orbit of Neptune and that contains dwarf planets and other small bodies made mostly of ice

Meteoroid: A relative small rocky body that travels through space

Meteor: A bright streak of light that results when a meteoroid burns up in Earth’s atmosphere; “shooting star”

Meteorite: A meteoroid or any small part or a meteoroid that reaches Earth’s surface; classified as stony, iron, and stony-iron; almost all produced from collisions between asteroids