Minor Members of the

Solar System
Asteroids
Asteroids are chunks of
rocks or metals that vary
in size. The word asteroid
comes from the Greek
word asteroeides meaning
“starlike,” its root word
“aster” means a “star”
Asteroids are said to ne
remnants of an exploded
planet or planetisimals,
which are bodies formed
from dust, rocks, and other
materials that had never
grown large enough to
become planets.
Asteroids are found
between the orbits of
Mars and Jupiter.
This area is called
the asteroid belt.
The Kuiper Belt
contains thousands of
massive Kuiper Belt
objects (KBOs)
including asteroids.
Kuiper Belt is a disk-
shaped band of icy objects
beyond Neptune’s orbit.
The Kuiper Belt is
estimated to contain
between 1.1 and 1.9
million asteroids larger
than 1 km in diameter.
Trojan asteroids are asteroids
that revolve around the sun
sharing same orbit as a
planet. They are at stable
positions (Lagrangian points)
either about 60 degrees
ahead or 60 degrees behind
of the planet in the orbit.
The Trojan asteroids
that share the orbit of
Jupiter around the sun
are the most significant
population of Trojan
asteroids.
The characteristics of asteroids
are brightness, which depends on
the asteroid’s size and its distance
from the observer; apparent
brightness, which depends on the
degree of illumination called the
phase of the object (percentage of
the surface which is illuminated
by the sun)
Asteroids have
irregular shapes due
partly to the process
of collissional
fragmentation.
Comets
Balls of ice, rocks,
and dust particles
in the outer space
are known as
comets.
The word comet evolved from
the Middle English word
comete between 1150 and 1200.
The Greeks called the word
comet kometes meaning
“wearing long hair.” The root
word of kometes is kome
meaning “to let one’s hair
grow.”
Comets have a nucleus
that centrally located a
coma that is a cloudlike
structure around the
nucleus, and a tail that
is short or long.
A comet’s nucleus consists
mainly of ice and dust and a
small rocky core. The ice part
is commonly believed to
consists of frozen water with
ammonia, carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide, and
methane.
The coma is a cloud
formed when ice on the
surface of the nucleus
begins turning into gas
upon getting closer to
the sun.
The sun’s radiation pushes
dust particles away from the
coma to form a dust tail,
while an ion tail is formed
when charged particles fro
the sun convert the comet’s
gases into ions.
Comets follow a highly
elliptical orbit while revolving
around the sun. When a comet
is near the sun, it heats up
causing the tail to become
longer due to the melted ice.
The tail becomes short when
the comet is far from the sun.
Meteoroids
Meteoroids are small
chunks of rocks or
metals traveling in
outer space which
originated from
asteroids or comets
orbiting around the sun.
The word meteoroid comes
from the Greek word
meteoros meaning ‘high in
the air.” Meteoroids contain
iron and nickel similar to
some rocks on Earth. Others
contain ice.
Meteoroids orbit around
the sun at various
velocities. They move
through the Earth’s orbital
space at an average of
about 20 000 m/s.
When you look up to the
skies at night, sometimes
you will see “falling stars,”
other than the stars and the
moon. These falling stars are
not actually stars falling
from the skies but are
meteors.
They are believed
to have ended the
Cretaceous period
which killed the
dinosaurs.
A meteoroid that has entered the
earth’s atmosphere is called a
meteor. As meteors enter the
atmosphere, they undergo a
great collision or friction that
melts or vaporizes the rocks or
metals, creating a bright streak
of light in the skies at night.
A meteor shower is a
phenomenon that is caused
by streams of meteoroids
entering the Earth’s
atmosphere or formed by the
icy and dusty debris stream
of a comet along its orbit as it
gets nearer the sun.
Most meteors entering Earth’s
atmosphere are burned. A
meteor that is too large to be
stopped completely by the
atmosphere may strike the Earth
with its cosmic velocity. It may
explode in the air near the
ground, causing an air blast or
an air-blast forming craters.
A meteor that reaches
the Earth’s surface
without being
completely vaporized is
called a meteorite.
Meteorites are the size
of a fist or larger.
METEORITE