Solar System Debris

Comets:  Nucleus is a dirty snowball (Whipple) from 1-10 km.

    We see ion tail, a veil of evaporated ions swept back by solar

    wind.  It always points away from the sun, and has a magnetic

    field creating a glow like the aurora borealis.  A dust tail, visible

    mainly in the infrared, is left in its wake. Comets break up a       

    bit each time they come close to the sun.  Debris in earth's          

    orbit creates a meteor shower at a regular time each year.             

   (Like the Leonids--from constellation Leo in mid-November.)

   The radiation, solar wind sublimate jets, making nucleus spin.

    Most comets spend most of their time in the Oort Cloud far       

    beyond Pluto. (Few in the Kuiper Belt just beyond Pluto.)

Asteroids: space rocks. The asteroid belt: over 100,000                  

between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres--largest 1000 km diam.,            

Pallas, Vesta, Juno. Either it is a broken up planet or Jupiter's     

 gravity kept it in pieces.  Kirkwood gaps--fraction of Jupiter’s period.

     The Trojans: 700 carried around in gravity wells in front of

         and behind Jupiter in its orbit (at Lagrangian Points).

     The Amors--5 large ones that come near earth's orbit.

      The Apollos--5 large ones that cross earth's orbit.

      Many others in Kuiper Belt, Oort cloud, and dispersed.

Meteors--shooting stars, rocks burning up as they fall in atmos.

Meteoroid--rock in space, Meteorite--rock on earth from space,

stony to stony-irons. Carbonaceous chondrites-stars. 11 m/s