Comets, Asteroids, & Meteors

  1. Comets Come from Two Regions Beyond Pluto: the ______Belt & the ______Cloud. These 2 regions are ______to ______AU’s from Earth. The orbits of comets are highly ______and often off the ______. Comets are about the size of mountains on average and made of ______.
  2. ______Belt objects include Pluto sized objects. In 2003 scientists discovered ______!

Sedna is a Kuiper Belt object that is ______AU’s from the Sun & about the size of ______. Sedna is mainly ice and its orbit is highly ______like a comet. It takes over ______years to orbit the Sun! Sedna was the largest Kuiper Belt object to be discovered since Pluto’s discovery in ______.

  1. ______is larger than Pluto and forced the science community to re-define ______! Eris was originally named ______(that’s right…for Xena the warrior princess!).

In the future we can expect to find possibly hundreds or even thousands of _____ planets!

The ______of the 10th planet problem has been solved!

  1. Comets May Have Supplied the Earth’s Oceans with ______! Comets and other chunks of rock bombarded the early Earth over ______years ago adding to the mass of Earth.

Comets also carry ______compounds that carry the ingredients for life and may

be important “______” within our solar system!

  1. Comets have three parts: ______, ______, ______. Comets are called “______”. Dust and water vapor (gas) glow as a comet approaches the Sun producing the ______. As a comet approaches the Sun the nucleus streams ______and water vapor in a tail which always ______away from the Sun due to the ______.
  2. Edmond ______predicted the return of the comet that is named for him in 1705. Comets ______people and they thought disasters would follow comets
  1. Asteroids are big and small ______orbiting between ______. There are ______of rocks in the asteroid belt larger than 20 meters. The largest are 250 km in diameter.
  2. There have been several major Earth changing bolide ______in the past! A bolide (likely an asteroid) that was 10 km wide hit Earth ______years ago ending the age of the dinosaurs!
  3. ______are small pieces of rock in space that likely broke off an asteroid or comet. When a meteoroid enters Earth’s ______it catches fire due to the ______of Earth’s atmosphere. A meteor that hits the ______to be found on the ground later is called a ______.
  4. The ______on the Moon were caused by large meteors as were many on Earth. Meteor ______occur when the Earth passes ______through the dust clouds of comets (the remains of a comets tail!) You can see hundreds of shooting stars during a good meteor ______
  5. Comets, Asteroids, & Meteors are ______to our solar systems past and future! Our Solar System formed from a ______mass of gas and dust over 4,600 million years ago. In the center gas and dust ______to form the Sun.
  6. Solar ______from the Sun pushed away remaining gas and dust ______planets freshly formed.
  7. Newly formed planets swept up leftover pieces large and small, and large ______kept the planets from ______. Earth remained molten from impacts of bolides for many ______of years!
  8. One impact with a planetesimal the size of ______blew off one sixth the mass of the Earth forming our ______!
  9. Today the remaining comets, ______and meteors are the remaining bits of our early ______System.
  10. Bolide ______are far less likely today, but remain a real ______for our future!

A question to answer: What is the name of the asteroid that will pass below the level of Earths communication satellites in 2029? ______What does the name mean? ______