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Minor Members of the Solar System• In addition to the planets, there
are many other objects in our solar system
• Asteroids -
• small rocky bodies ranging in size from a grain of sand to 1000’s of km across.
• most orbit the sun in the “Astroid Belt” - an area between Mars and Jupiter
• some have irregular orbits that even bring them close to earth
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Minor Members of the Solar System
• Comets -
• pieces of rocky and metallic materials held together by frozen gases
• gases may be water, methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide.
• most comets travel in elliptical orbits around the sun
• as a comet approaches the sun, these ices vaporize producing the coma and possibly a tail.
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Minor Members of the Solar System
• Comets usually come from two main areas of the outer solar system -
• Kuiper Belt -
• location of comets with short orbital periods
• Oort Cloud -
• spherical area around the solar system
• contains comets which are distributed in all directions
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Minor Members of the Solar System• Meteoroids - small solid
particle traveling through space
• Come from -
1. Extra material not used to create the planets and moons
2. Material from the astroid belt
3. Solid remains of old comets
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Minor Members of the Solar System
• Meteor - a meteoroid that has entered and burned up in Earth’s atmosphere
• Meteorite - a meteoroid that reaches Earth’s surface.