NEO: Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors - reappears every 76 years.
Its next appearance is
Comets
- The word "comet" comes from the Greek
word for "hair.”
- Our ancestors thought comets were stars
with what looked like flowing hair trailing
behind.
- “Dirty Snowballs”
- loose collections of ice, dust, and small
rocky particles whose orbits are usually very
long, narrow ellipses.
Structure of a Comet
I. Comet’s Head
- Coma
Outer layer
(water vapor, CO2, and other gases)
- Nucleus
Solid inner core
(frozen ice, gas and dust )
II. Comet’s tail
- Tails gets longer the closer a comet gets to
the sun
- Tails are always directed away from Sun.
- Gas (ion) tail points straight away from Sun.
- Dust tail curves toward orbital path
III. Comet’s Orbit
- Comets move in an elliptical shaped orbit.
Origin of Comets
o Kuiper belt
-doughnut-shaped region that extends
beyond Neptune’s orbit to about 100 times
Earth’s distance from the sun.
o Oort cloud
-spherical region of comets that surrounds
the solar system out to more than 1,000
times the distance between Pluto and the
sun.
Famous Comets
o Comet Halley
- the most famous comet in history.
- Each time this comet's orbit approaches the
Sun, its 15-km (9-mile) nucleus sheds about 6 m
(7 yards) of ice and rock into space. This debris
forms an orbiting trail that, when falling to
Earth, is called the Orionids meteor shower.
in 2061.
o Comet Hale-Bopp
- July 23, 1995- an unusually large and bright
comet was seen outside of Jupiter's orbit by
Alan Hale of New Mexico and Thomas Bopp of
Arizona.
- Exceptionally large size.
- It was visible even through bright city skies, and
may have been the most viewed comet in
recorded history.
- It will not appear again for another 2,400 years.
o Comet Hyakutake (pronounced "hyah-koo-
tah-kay")
- On January 30, 1996, Yuji Hyakutake an
amateur astronomer from southern Japan,
discovered a new comet using a pair of
binoculars.
o Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
- -Between July 16 and July 22, 1994, more than
20 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
collided with the planet Jupiter. Astronomers
Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker and David Levy
discovered the comet in 1993. It was the first
collision of two Solar System bodies ever to be
recorded.
Comet Exploration
The Deep Impact spacecraft was launched in
December 2004 and encountered comet Tempel 1
on July 4, 2005-mission that studied and impacted
comet Tempel 1.
Asteroids
- A small and rocky space object.
- found in the asteroid belt located between
the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
- made of metals, silicate, iron, nickel, and
carbon
How many asteroids are there?
- 40,000 known asteroids that are over 0.5 miles
(1 km) in diameter in the asteroid belt
- 3,000 asteroids have been cataloged
- smaller asteroids (100,000)
 - Classified by composition: stony, iron ,
or stony-iron.
Ceres (1801)

- first one discovered (and the biggest)

- 578 miles (930 km)
Asteroid becoming Moon
- can be pulled out of their solar orbit by the
gravitational pull of a planet. They would then
orbit that planet instead of orbiting the Sun.
- Astronomers theorize that the two moons of
Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are captured
asteroids.
What do we do if an NEO is approaching?
o Unknown… Still being experimented.
o Scientist are calculating ways to use nuclear
energy to divert an incoming object.
o High energy x-ray pulses produce a shock
wave to push the NEO in the opposite
direction.

Asteroid Strike
o Scientists hypothesize that one or more
large asteroids hit Earth 65 million years
ago and caused extinction of the dinosaurs.
o Scientists also hypothesize that the largest
mass extinction, 250 million years ago,
killing off 90% of all species was also caused
by a large asteroid.

Asteroid Exploration
o Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)
mission
- first of NASA's Discovery missions and the
first mission ever to go into orbit around an
asteroid (launched 1996).
- Studies were made of the asteroid Eros’
size, shape, mass, magnetic field,
composition, and surface and internal
structure (last data signals sent in 2001)

Meteoroids
- chunk of rock or dust in space.
- come from comets or asteroids.
Meteor

- When a meteoroid enters Earth’s

atmosphere, friction with the air creates
heat and produces a streak of light that
you can see in the sky.
- meteoroid that enters Earth’s
atmosphere and burns up
Meteorites
- Meteoroids that pass through the
atmosphere and hit Earth’s surface are
called meteorites.