Ch2 Astro W7 Asteroid, Comets and Meteoroid

QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY
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Diffun, 3401 Quirino
COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
SELF-PACED LEARNING MODULE
IN
ES 102 (ASTRONOMY )
BY:
CYNTHIA A. CABICUNGAN
Subject Instructor
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The leading center for academic and technological excellence Develop competent and morally upright professionals and generate
and prime catalyst for a progressive and sustainable Quirino appropriate knowledge and technologies to meet the needs of Quirino
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Module 1 Asteroid, Comets and Meteoroids

Competencies Enumerate and describe the various classes of small bodies that orbit the sun
Describe the different kinds of meteorites and what their different compositions
indicate about their origins
Discussion Asteroids
The asteroid belt (shown in white) is located between the

orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This diagram also shows the
location of the Trojan and Greek asteroids, located at two
Lagrangian points of the Sun-Jupiter system.
Asteroids are rocky and metallic interplanetary

bodies. They appear throughout the Solar
System, but are most abundant in the main
belt, a region between the orbits
of Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids lack enough ice
to give off gas like comets. The largest, Ceres,
is about 1000 kilometers (600 miles) across,
while the smallest are only a few meters
across. Detailed images from passing spacecraft show that asteroids smaller than 100
kilometers or so are irregularly-shaped cratered objects,
while larger ones are probably spherical due to their own
self-gravity.
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Astronomers discovered asteroids while looking for a

new planet. After Uranus was discovered in 1781, some
astronomers felt that there might be a planet in the large
empty zone between Mars and Jupiter. This was
suggested by the roughly geometric spacing of the
planets (Bode's rule). Astronomers set out to find the
"missing planet.” Instead, Ceres was discovered on the
first night of 1801 by the Sicilian monk Giuseppe Piazzi.
Ceres was located at 2.8 AU from the Sun — right between Mars and Jupiter, where
they had expected to find a planet.
Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science fiction writer, has noted an interesting fact about
this discovery. Ceres was found just after the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel had "proved"
philosophically that there could be no more than the seven then-known planetary
bodies, Mercury through Uranus. As you can see, the scientific method of going out and
looking tells us more about the physical nature of the universe than the philosophical
method of sitting at home speculating!
After an asteroid's orbit has been accurately identified, it is given a number (indicating
the order of discovery) and a name (chosen by the discoverer). Ceres is thus more
properly called 1 Ceres, and the second-discovered asteroid is 2 Pallas. The names are
sometimes Latinized and they cover a wide range of human interests, including cities,
mythology (Quetzalcoatl, Odysseus), politicians (Hooveria), celebrities (Zappafrank),
family members, and lovers. (One form of astronomical amusement involves making
sentences using only asteroid names. A favorite is "Rockefellia Neva Edda McDonalda
Hamburga.")
A diagram showing the five Lagrangian points in a two-body system with

one body far more massive than the other (e.g. the Sun and the Earth). In
such a system, L3–L5 will appear to share the secondary's orbit,
although in fact they are situated slightly outside it.
Several subgroups of asteroids do not orbit in the main

belt. The Trojan asteroids, for example, orbit the Sun in
two swarms that lie in Jupiter's orbit, 60° ahead of and
60° behind the planet. These locations are called
Lagrangian points, after the French astronomer Joseph
Louis Lagrange. Lagrange discovered that an object at that location would be stable
due to the combination of gravitational forces from the Sun and Jupiter. The name
Trojan comes from the tradition of naming these particular asteroids after heroes in
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Homer's epic poem of the Trojan War. More than 1500 Trojan asteroids are known. A
few dozen of them are bigger than 50 kilometers across. Astronomers estimate that the
two Trojan swarms contain nearly as many asteroids as the main asteroid belt, but most
Trojans are too far away to see easily. The largest Trojan is 624 Hektor, estimated to be
100 km wide and 300 km long, tumbling end over end in Jupiter's orbit.
Some asteroids come close enough to be of special interest to Earth-dwellers. These

objects have been perturbed by gravitational encounters into the inner solar system.
Their orbits have been disturbed or deviated slightly, so they take a new trajectory. This
occurs any time a small body is affected by the gravity of a larger body, and there are
many examples in the Solar System.
Perhaps the best sense of the distribution of asteroids in the Solar System comes from
a map showing the actual positions of thousands of cataloged asteroids on a specific,
randomly chosen date. In such a map, the main belt stands out clearly, along with the
two swarms of Trojans in Jupiter's orbit, and a scattering of Earth-approaching asteroids
among the terrestrial planets. A plot of the radial distribution of asteroids from the Sun
shows a lot of structure. The regions that are almost free of asteroids are called
Kirkwood gaps, after their discoverer. The gaps are caused by gravitational resonances
with mighty Jupiter, in exactly the same way that Mimas clears out regions of Saturn's
rings. There are gaps at the primary harmonics of 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1, but they also occur
at other ratios like 5:2 and 7:2. The same gravitational physics occurs in the asteroid
belt, on a scale 3,000 times larger than Saturn's rings!
The asteroid belt is not a crowded place — distances are vast, and asteroids are small.
If you were cruising in the asteroid belt, you would rarely see another asteroid passing
close by, contrary to Hollywood versions of the belt as a dangerous forest of rocks.
Several unmanned spacecraft have already flown through the belt with no serious
consequence, though they did experience more impacts by dust grains.
Surveys for Earth Crossing Asteroids
Astronomers have discovered several thousand asteroids that approach the

Earth's orbit. These bodies are referred to as Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) or more
generally, Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), since some of them are comets. The biggest two
NEOs are 1035 Ganymede, at roughly 40 kilometers across, and 433 Eros, at about 30
kilometers. Eros comes within about 0.1 A.U. of Earth's orbit, but doesn't ever cross it.
Asteroids that actually cross Earth's orbit represent the greatest danger of hitting us in
the near future. The biggest of these Earth-crossing asteroids would cause a global
disaster if they actually hit Earth, but that's unlikely to happen within the next million
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years.
Asteroids may be the greatest (and most predictable) threat to the Earth's ability to
support life. Astronomers estimate that an object larger than a kilometer will impact the
Earth every 500,000 years, and smaller asteroid impacts will take place at even greater
frequencies. While most of the smallest asteroids burn up in the Earth's atmosphere or
hit the surface as small bits of gravel, any asteroid bigger than about 50 meters will
make it to the planet's surface and form a meaningfully large crater. Objects this size hit
the Earth about once every 1,000 years. This is the size of the object that caused the
Tunguska explosion in 1908. Impacts such as that in Chelyabinsk in 2014 happen every
decade or so. Smaller objects, about 10 meters across, hit the Earth's atmosphere a
few times each year.
The number of near earth asteroids

discovered up until 2017, broken
down by each of the missions that
discovered them.
Once a tentative
identification of an object is
made, further observations
determine its orbit and other
properties. Its apparent
brightness is a complicated
product of the
object's albedo, distance,
and size. Combining
optical, infrared, and radar data can pinpoint the values for these properties. Radar
detections can also be used to calculate the asteroid's spin rate and put together a
shape model. Spectroscopy can be used to identify the composition of the asteroid and
classify it according to spectral type.LINEAR, or Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research,
is one of the most productive of the optical sky surveys.
It consists of two telescopes in the New Mexico desert,
run by astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, with support from NASA as well as the
U.S. Air Force. LINEAR scans the night sky an average
of five times every unclouded night, looking for
previously undetected NEOs. Its observations are
concentrated along the ecliptic plane, where most NEAs
are found.
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For that reason, an international organization dedicated to detecting these potentially

dangerous objects was created in 1998. Spaceguard is a private collection of
observatories, astronomers, and amateur astronomers from around the world, including
participants from Europe, Britain, the United States, Japan, and Australia. Spaceguard's
goal is to find 90% of the NEOs larger than one kilometer across by 2008. That size limit
was chosen because the impact of an asteroid a kilometer across would cause global
devastation, versus merely regional disasters for smaller impacts. The total population
of large NEOs (those one kilometer across or bigger) is estimated to be between 1,000
and 1,200.
The number of known NEOs has increased dramatically since the 1990s. The dramatic
collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into Jupiter in 1994 reinforced the threat of
impacts from space in the public mind. The ecological threat was also established as an
impact origin for the mass extinction that ended the cretaceous period became more
widely accepted. To evaluate the future risk, the best approach is to continue the survey
programs that discover and catalog Earth-approaching asteroids, until we have
registered all those larger than 500 meters across. Calculating their future orbital
trajectories will determine the likelihood of a major threat in the coming decades or
centuries. In the longer term, the ability to fly spacecraft to these asteroids and slightly
alter their orbits could safeguard civilization against a global disaster.
Asteroid Shapes
Asteroids smaller than about 100 km are not perfectly round. Why? The answer
involves gravity and the idea of equilibrium. Thermal equilibrium is the tendency of
thermal energy to flow so that temperature differences are equalized. Equilibrium
applies to gravity, too. Every part of a planet's surface has a gravitational potential
energy. This quantity can be expressed as the product of the object's mass (m),
the acceleration of gravity (g), and the height of the object (h):
PEGravity = m × g × h
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So potential energy increases with the mass of the planet (because a more massive
planet will have a larger value of g), and with the distance from the planet's center.
Gravity pulls all the parts of an object toward its center of mass. That's why the cereal in
a box settles when you shake it! The gravitational potential energy of the cereal is
minimized when it moves toward the center of the Earth. Gravity always works to
minimize the potential energy of all parts of a planet. High places have a larger
gravitational potential energy, and are pulled downward more strongly than low places.
Take a large tray and cover it with sand or gravel heaped into "mountains." If you shake
the tray, the sand will quickly settle to a flat surface where the gravitational potential
energy is the same everywhere. This is an example of equilibrium.
What does the idea of equilibrium have to do with asteroids? Large bodies in the solar
system have enough mass so that their strong gravity forces their surfaces to have the
same potential energy everywhere. The result is the most symmetric shape possible: a
sphere. The Earth is as round and smooth as a billiard ball. Small asteroids, however,
do not have enough gravity to overcome the strength of the rock they are made of. So
they have irregular shapes.
Not only are asteroids shaped oddly, sometimes they have companions. The second
close-up photo ever taken of an asteroid, that of the 52 km long asteroid 243 Ida taken
by the Galileo spacecraft, revealed a second small body orbiting Ida. Such satellites had
been suspected among other asteroids, but never confirmed. Their existence explains
an older discovery: Earth, the Moon, and Mars show numerous pairs of adjacent impact
craters of the same age. These must have formed when an asteroid and its satellite hit
simultaneously. Studies suggest that perhaps 10 to 20% of asteroids have sizable
“moonlets” moving around them.
Compound asteroids and asteroid satellites may be part of the same type of
phenomena. Imagine an asteroid hitting another body and blowing it apart in a colossal
collision. Now picture an asteroid passing too close to a planet and being pulled apart
by the larger body's tidal forces. In both cases, a jumble of fragments races outward.
Adjacent fragments may bump into each other. Some may fall together as pairs and
make dumb-bell shaped compound objects, and others may go into orbit around each
other. Thus, the seemingly disconnected discoveries of asteroid moons and compound
shapes may both be clues to asteroids' violent histories.
Composition of Asteroids
Even before a spacecraft went into orbit around an asteroid, astronomers had a good

idea of what asteroids are made of. They could use telescopes to measure the colors,
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reflectivity, and spectra of asteroids. Combined with radar data, this allowed them to
estimate their mineral properties. Using such techniques, astronomers in the 1970s and
1980s discovered that asteroids fall into several groups that differ in composition. The
three broad classes of asteroids are stony (S), metal-rich (M), and carbonaceous (C).
These are called “spectral types,” because they were originally based on the asteroids'
different spectra. Scientists can match these spectra with those of meteorites, to get
indirect measurements of asteroids' actual compositions.
The main belt of asteroids runs from about 2.1 AU to about 3.4 AU. Within the main belt,
the three spectral classes of asteroids are concentrated at different distances from the
Sun. Stony and metal-rich asteroids dominate the inner half of the main belt. These
asteroids are fairly light-colored, reflecting 10 to 20% of the light that strikes them, like
many familiar rocks on Earth. A few additional minor classes of asteroids have also
been found in this region.
In the middle of the asteroid belt, at about 2.7 A.U., lies a “soot line,” beyond which
black carbon-rich minerals dominate most asteroids and comets. In other words, most
interplanetary bodies beyond 2.7 A.U. are black in color, reflecting only about 4% of the
light that strikes them. The sooty carbonaceous materials mixed into these bodies
cause their low reflectivity. The two groups of Trojan asteroids clustered in Jupiter's orbit
also have this dark color, as do comet nuclei associated with the Kuiper Belt and Oort
Cloud, even farther from the Sun. Some of these outer Solar System objects are
actually more dark brown colored than black, probably due to coloration from organic
compounds.
The composition of asteroids depends on their distance from the Sun. This fact shows
that the asteroids have not been strongly mixed up; they lie at roughly the distance
where they originally formed. The Sun's radiation varies with the inverse square of
distance, so the inner edge of the belt receives (3.4 / 2.1) 2 = 2.6 times as much
radiation as the outer edge. Some of the bodies closest to the Sun got hot enough to
melt, differentiate, and develop iron cores. Asteroids farther from the Sun originally
contained sooty carbonaceous material, water molecules, and even ice. They didn't get
warm enough to melt the rock, but we know from mineral studies of carbonaceous
meteorites that the ice in some of them melted and percolated through the rock
fractures as liquid water. Still farther from the Sun, ice remained solid and produced
comet nuclei. From this point of view, comets are merely “icy asteroids.” They formed so
far from the Sun, in such cold regions, that they retained much of their original ice,
mixed with carbonaceous material.
Comets
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A photograph of Halley's comet taken in 1986.
Comets are the most visually spectacular of the small

bodies in the Solar System. When they pass close to
the Earth, they appear as bright objects visible from
much of the world. A comet bright enough to see with
the naked eye appears in our skies, on average,
about once per decade. When a comet passes
through the inner Solar System near the Earth, it can
be seen drifting slowly from night to night among the stars. (Writers sometimes
incorrectly describe comets as "flashing across the sky" like shooting stars. But in
reality, they don't move that quickly. Instead, they hang motionless and ghostly among
the stars, and can be seen to change position only from hour to hour or from night to
night.) Young Tycho Brahe used his observations of a comet to show that it passed
among the planets. This insight shattered the ancient Greek idea of crystalline spheres
and set the stage for the Copernican revolution.
Close up of Comet Hartley 2. This image was captured by NASA's EPOXI

mission between Nov. 3 and 4, 2010, during the spacecraft's flyby of comet
Hartley 2. It was captured using the spacecraft's Medium-Resolution
Instrument.
Comets have several parts. The bright, diffuse part is

the comet head, or the coma. The comet tail is a fainter
glow extending out from the head, pointing away from
the Sun. Although we see bright comets widely
discussed in the media, many people are disappointed when they actually see one,
because they observe it from a city. City lights wash out the delicate glow of a comet. A
drive to a dark site in the country, away from the city glare, produces a completely
different impression: a bright comet's tail may extend across twenty degrees or more of
the sky, like a delicate, arcing searchlight beam.
A telescope reveals a brilliant, star-like point of light at the center of the comet head.

The comet nucleus at the center of this light is the only substantial, solid part of the
comet, but it's too small to be distinguished by telescopes on Earth. A typical
comet nucleus is a tiny world of dirty ice, only about 1 to 20 kilometers (or a few miles)
across, which is tiny compared to most planets and satellites. The visible part of the
comet's head and tail is made up of diffuse gas and dust emitted from the nucleus. A
comet's glowing head is usually larger in volume than Jupiter, but it's only a very thin
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cloud of gas and dust.
As a comet nucleus moves from the cold outer solar system to the inner Solar System,
sunlight warms it and causes the dirty surface ice to sublime into gas. Expansion of the
gas carries it away from the nucleus, together with dislodged dust grains. As this cloud
of gas and dust spreads, it runs into the thin solar wind rushing outward from the Sun.
Because the solar wind is moving away from the Sun, they always carry the comet's gas
and dust in a direction away from the Sun. Solar radiation ionizes gas molecules in the
tail, so they're affected by the Sun's magnetic field. Larger dust grains are too massive
to be strongly affected. (Similarly, if you release a handful of gravel and dirt, the fine
particles are blown by the wind, but large stones are not.) Thus two separate tails form,
one of ionized gas, and one of larger dust particles.
Comet 17P/Holmes with the Ion Tail
Comet tails often stretch more than an astronomical unit, longer

than the distance from the Earth to the Sun! Caught in the solar
magnetic field and solar wind, the tails stream out behind the
comet as the comet approaches the Sun, but lead as the comet recedes from the Sun.
They might be likened to a woman's long hair streaming out behind her as she walks
into the wind, but in front of her if she reverses direction. In fact, the word comet comes
from the Latin word for “hair.” The ion tail and the dust tail are usually slightly separated,
due to the different strengths of the forces acting on them and the different masses of
the constituent material.
Early Observations of Comets
A photograph of Halley's comet taken in 1986.
In ancient times, before science explained the phenomena,

people interpreted comets as evil omens. The mysterious
appearance of a visitor in the night sky was as frightening as
the sudden darkness of a solar eclipse. For example,
Halley's Comet has been recorded and linked to grave
events throughout history. In 66 A.D., its arrival was said to have heralded the
destruction of Jerusalem. Five orbits later, it was said to mark the defeat of Attila the
Hun in 451. In 1066, it presided over the Norman conquest of England. In 1456, the
appearance of a comet coincided with a threatened invasion of Europe by the Turks,
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who had already taken Constantinople three years before. Pope Calixtus III prayed for
deliverance "from the devil, the Turk, and the comet."
These superstitions were eventually debunked by the English astronomer Edmond

Halley. Halley had studied planetary orbits thoroughly, and he played a key role in the
emergence of Newton's theory of gravity. One day in 1684, he was having lunch in a
London pub with two other scientists. Halley felt sure that Kepler's elliptical orbits could
be explained by a gravitational force that diminished with the inverse square of the
distance from Sun. They all made a wager over who could prove this assertion. They
each failed. Halley then visited Newton in Cambridge and posed the same question to
him. He found that Newton had already done the proof and urged him to publish it. From
then on, Halley was the irresistible force that encouraged Newton to finish the Principia
— perhaps the greatest scientific book ever written. Halley paid the publishing costs
himself and sent copies to leading scientists and philosophers throughout Europe.
In 1704, Halley was working with Newton's law of gravity and some new methods of
computing orbits. He discovered that comets travel on long, elliptical orbits around the
Sun, and that certain comets reappear many times. Calculating the orbits of 24 well-
documented comets, Halley found that what was believed to be four different comets
(seen in 1456, 1531, 1607, and 1682) had the same orbit, and appeared approximately
75 years apart. Halley correctly inferred that these appearances were by a single comet.
He even showed that slight irregularities in the time of appearance of the comet were
caused by the gravitational influence of other planets, especially Jupiter. Halley
predicted the comet would return late in 1758. It did so, on Christmas night of that year.
The discovery that comets are regular visitors on ordinary elliptical orbits, with
predictable motions, helped dispel the superstition that comets are evil omens. Halley
showed that Newton's law of gravity applied just as well to the elongated orbit of a
comet as it did to the nearly circular orbit of a planet. His discovery extended the
application of this simple physical law. It's also a classic example of how science works:
before Halley, comets were viewed as random and mysterious visitors. Halley linked
four separate events to a single object, and thus revealed a pattern in nature. He was
then able to provide a mathematical description of the pattern, the comet's elliptical
orbit, and make a successful prediction for the next appearance in the sequence. For
many people in the 18th century, this cemented the idea that nature was
comprehensible and predictable. Earlier in history much the same thing happened with
solar eclipses, which went from being signs of "angering the gods" to being repeatable
and predictable phenomena.
Since the days of Halley, the brightest comets have been named for their discoverers.
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Many comets are not visible to the naked eye, so every comet is also given an
anonymous, scientific name. Telescopes and computational techniques have advanced
greatly since Halley's time. We don't have to wait for a return visit to recognize a comet.
The orbits of most comets are calculated within a few weeks of their initial discovery.
Halley's Comet renewed its fame in 1910, when the Earth passed through its tail. It was
dimmer in 1986, because it did not pass as close to the Earth. Halley's comet will not
appear again until 2061. A recent visitor to our nighttime skies was Comet Hale-Bopp, a
beautiful event that was well placed for observation in 1997.
Structure of the Comet Nucleus
Although astronomers correctly placed comets in orbit around the Sun in the 1700s,
they had yet to determine the physical nature of the comet itself. Spectrometers
indicated some of the compounds surrounding comets, but could not penetrate the
coma to detect the character of the nucleus. Around 1950, using all the available
observations, Harvard astronomer, Fred Whipple, was the first to deduce that a comet
nucleus must be a block of dirty ice. He noted that the composition of gas streaming off
the nucleus indicated subliming ice, and that the dust particles must have been trapped
in the ice of the nucleus. Whipple's theoretical picture of a comet nucleus came to be
called the dirty iceberg model.

Direct confirmation of Whipple's model came when an international fleet of five
spacecraft (two Japanese, two Russian, and one European) investigated Halley's
Comet in 1986. The European probe came closest, flying only about 600 kilometers
from the nucleus. That probe was named Giotto, after the Italian artist whose 1304
painting of Halley's Comet may have been the first to
represent it in a work of art.
Nucleus of Halley's comet.
Giotto and the other probes found the region around the
nucleus to be a hazy, dusty environment. This made the
pictures they returned fairly fuzzy. Giotto was actually hit
by a dust grain when it was about 960 kilometers from the
nucleus, knocking it partially out of commission for 32 minutes
during the closest approach. However, the spacecraft recovered
in time to take spectacular images of the nucleus. The probe's
close-up pictures revealed a floating iceberg-like object, about 15
kilometers long and 8 kilometers wide. For comparison, that's
about the same size and shape as Deimos, the
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smaller satellite of Mars.
Enchanced-color image of Deimos, a moon of Mars, captured by the HiRISE

instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on 21 Feb 2009.
Halley's nucleus is as dark as black velvet. It reflects only 4% of

the light that strikes it, compared with 60 to 80% for clean ice.
Earth-based observers have found similar results for other comet
nuclei. The black material is believed to be carbon-rich dust,
which is finely distributed through the ice. When the ice sublimes,
it leaves behind a concentrated layer of the dark dust. Jets of gas and dust shoot off
"active" spots on the black nucleus. The gas in the head of the comet, around the
nucleus, was found to be about 80% water vapor by volume.
Halley's comet was the first one to be observed by space craft, but it wasn't the last.
The 2001 flyby of Deep Space 1 past comet Borrelly and the 2010 EPOXI fly-by of
comet Hartley 2 (which strongly resembles a peanut) are just two examples. The most
recent visit to a comet was the Rosetta mission of the European Space Agency and the
spectacular landing by its Philae probe in late 2014. Rosetta targeted Comet
69P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it headed into the inner Solar System. Rosetta went
into orbit around the irregularly-shaped 4-kilometer wide comet, mapped it, and scouted
out landing sites. Then the Philae lander was released for the hazardous attempt at a
soft landing. Due to the comet's weak gravity the 20-kilogram lander weighed no more
than sheet of paper and it drifted in at 2 mph, bounced lazily twice, and came to rest
under a cliff on the comet. Although mostly successful, there were failures of the
Rosetta reaction drive system and the Philae harpoon system designed to tether it to
the comet surface. Philae ran out of battery power quite quickly but the work of Rosetta
continues.
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of

comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, taken on May 17, 1994, with
the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2(WFPC2) in wide
field mode. When the comet was observed, its train of
21 icy fragments stretched across 1.1 million km (710
thousand miles) of space, or 3 times the distance
between Earth and the Moon. This required 6 WFPC exposures spaced along the comet train to include all the
nuclei. The image was taken in red light. The comet was approximately 660 million km (410 million miles) from Earth
when the picture was taken, on a mid-July collision course with the gas giant planet Jupiter.
Together, these missions are building a picture of a comet nuclei as dirty, tumbling
snow balls that vary from tightly packed masses to lose ices. The ice in many comet
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nuclei is very weak, so that some nuclei spontaneously break into pieces. This can
result from either gravitational tidal forces when a comet passes close to the Sun or
a planet, or from pressure that builds up as more ice turns to gas, expanding as it does
so. This is why Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 split into many fragments before it
impacted Jupiter in 1994.
Comet Chemistry
Iron spectrum
Progress on the question of comets' composition came in 1868 when English

astronomer William Huggins first studied them through a spectroscope. This instrument
spreads visible light into an array of wavelengths, or a spectrum, revealing the amount
of light reflected from an object in different colors. The spectrum allows astronomers to
measure the material properties of a celestial body. Different materials have distinct
spectra, allowing the composition of a distant object to be determined.
Huggins found that the comets he observed contained gaseous carbon.

Modern astronomers have shown that comets also contain the same
atoms we see elsewhere in the Solar System, including hydrogen (H),
oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), and carbon (C). Comets also contain many of
the molecules that can be formed from these four elements, including
CN, CH, OH, H2O+, CN+, CH+, OH+, N2+, CO+, and CO2+. (The raised "+"
indicates a positively charged ion, an atom or molecule that has lost
one or more electrons. When an atom loses an electron, it acquires a
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positive charge.) Recent studies have also revealed complex organic molecules, such
as CH2CN. This discovery is important because it proves that organic molecules, which
are the building blocks of life, form elsewhere in the universe besides on Earth.
There is a connection between the atoms and molecules that make up a comet and its
icy composition. Note that all the atoms (H, O, C, N) and molecules detected in comets
are just the ones that would be expected if the gas around comets were to form from the
sublimation of common Solar System ices, such as H 2O (water), CH4 (methane),
NH3 (ammonia), and CO2 (carbon dioxide). In other words, the H, O, C, and N atoms
and molecules streaming off comets are coming from subliming ice.
In addition to revealing the composition of comet gases, spectroscopes show that some
particles in comet tails are much bigger than individual molecules. These particles, or
dust grains, form slightly curved tails. Gas tails, by contrast, are straight. Magnetic
forces straighten the stream of ions in the gas tails, while the uncharged dust grains
form a curved tail.
Nucleus of Halley's comet.
The European Space Agency's Giotto mission gave

us excellent information on the chemical composition
of the dust in Halley's Comet. The carbon-rich dust
particles in the nucleus were also found to be rich in hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,
resembling meteoritic particles collected on Earth. These interplanetary dust particles
are believed to be rich in organic molecules (large, carbon-based molecules) and are
different from familiar terrestrial dust, which is richer in silicon, iron, other metals, and
their oxides. In 2014, the Philae lander detected carbon-rich organic solids on the comet
69P. Interest in this organic-rich cometary dust is growing. Scientists believe that as
comets collided with the forming planets early in Solar System history, they may have
provided organic molecules, without which, life on Earth may never have originated.
Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt
Portrait of Tycho Brahe
In ancient times no one knew how far away comets were. Many people
thought that they were phenomena in our own atmosphere. Seneca,
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the Roman contemporary of Jesus, wrote: "Some day there will arise a man who will
demonstrate in what regions of the heavens the comets take their way." That man was
Tycho Brahe. He arranged observations of a bright comet in 1577 from two different
locations. The comet showed a parallax shift with respect to the stars as seen from the
two places. Brahe proved by triangulation that the comet was more distant than the
Moon. This ruled out the old theory that comets were terrestrial. He used direct
observations and simple geometry to sweep away centuries of mystery and speculation.
This is the way that science works as we try to make sense of the universe.
Gerard Kuiper Jan Oort
Where do comets go when they are not visible to the eye or the telescope? The solution
to this puzzle began with the work of Dutch astronomer Jan Oort and the Dutch-
American astronomer Gerard Kuiper in the 1950s. Oort was a remarkable astronomer
who worked on everything from comets to cosmology; he was an active researcher well
into his 90s. He also established a strong tradition of astronomy in Holland that
continues to this day. Kuiper was also a visionary. He spent a number of years
searching for the best places to do observational astronomy — the ideal sites are high,
dry, and dark. Kuiper was convinced of the merits of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, but at
the time it was a barren, extinct volcano at the inhospitable altitude of 14,000 feet.
Today it is host to one of the largest collections of telescopes in the world.
Oort and Kuiper studied a large collection of data on comet orbits with particular
attention to how long comets spent at large distances from the Sun. They also thought
carefully about the way the Solar System might have formed. They deduced that there
must be two major sources for comets, both in the extreme outer edges of the Solar
System. According to Kepler's third law, more distant objects have longer orbital
periods. Kepler's second law says that an object travels more slowly when it is far from
the Sun. If the reservoir of comets is far from the Sun, then comets will have very long
orbits and they will spend most of their time far from the Sun.
Several distinct groups of comets have been recognized. Oort proposed that there is a
spherical swarm of comet nuclei far beyond Pluto that orbits around the Solar System
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like bees around a hive. The comets are 50,000 to 150,000 A.U. from the Sun, much
too far from Earth to be seen. They take 10 million to 60 million years to go around the
Sun. What led Oort to this striking hypothesis? He first noted that most comets are one-
time visitors. Unlike Halley's comet, they have not repeated their orbits within human
history. He also knew that comets could arrive from any direction; this suggests that
they occupy a spherical region rather than the flat plane defined by the planet orbits.
From Kepler's law, Oort knew that each comet must spend most of its orbit far from the
Sun. So for every comet seen in the inner Solar System, there must be many more
lurking in the depths of space beyond Pluto. From statistics of comet orbits and their
rate of appearance, Oort calculated that roughly 100 billion inactive comet nuclei,
invisible from Earth, lie in this frigid, distant region!
Diagram of the Oort Cloud
Many comets that we see in the inner Solar

System are temporarily "dropping in" from
the Oort cloud. They travel on huge elliptical
orbits that bring them thousands of A.U. to the
inner Solar System, where they loop around
the Sun at a distance of only a few A.U. or less
and then return to the deep freeze of the Oort
cloud.
Kuiper discovered a second group of comets

just beyond Neptune and Pluto, lying roughly in
the plane of the Solar System. Called the Kuiper belt, this group is concentrated at a
distance of 30 to 100 A.U. from the sun. Comet nuclei located in this group are mostly
too faint to be seen even with large telescopes and are too cold to give off gas or form
tails. Nonetheless, sensitive searches with electronic detectors began to turn up comets
in this region in 1992. Astronomers David Jewitt and Jane Luu, working in Hawaii,
discovered more than a dozen such objects in the mid-1990s. These are the largest and
closest comets in the Kuiper belt; most are located at distances from 35 to 45 A.U. from
the Sun. Jewitt and Luu estimated that the Kuiper belt contains 35,000 comet nuclei
bigger than 100 kilometers and even more small ones.
Observations of Sun-like stars sparked renewed interest in the Kuiper belt. By carefully
blocking out the light from the star, astronomers revealed that a number of these stars
have disks of dust — possibly comet debris — surrounding them. The disks reach out to
several hundred A.U. from the star. If stars like the Sun have Kuiper belts of cometary
debris, it could be a sign that they have planets too. Perhaps planets and comets are a
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natural consequence of star formation. Perhaps our rocky vantage point in space is not
unique. This speculation spurs astronomers in their search for debris around stars.
Kuiper Belt
Ever since Pluto was discovered, some have pondered if perhaps, like Ceres, it was just
the first of a class of objects to be discovered. The first astronomer to suggest this was
Frederick C. Leonard in 1930. He suggested that there could be a population of trans-
Neptunian objects waiting to be discovered. In 1943, Kenneth Edgeworth took this idea
one step further and theorized there could be an entire region
beyond Neptune containing icy debris too scattered to coalesce into a planet while the
Solar System was forming. This theory was built on ever further by Gerard Kuiper in
1951, who hypothesized that a disk of icy bodies could have formed in the region of
Neptune and beyond. Unfortunately, due to the mistaken belief of the time that Pluto
was the size of the Earth, Kuiper assumed that Pluto would have disrupted such a disk.
In the 1970's, astronomer Charles Kowal detected an icy object
between Saturn and Uranus. This was just the first of what became a regular series of
icy discoveries in the outer solar system. As these objects were found, and as it was
realized that Pluto was actually quite tiny, researchers realized Kuiper's early models
were correct in predicting an icy disk.
To date, observed Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have had orbits spanning from roughly
30 AU to 55 A.U. Like is observed with the Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt has gaps
where objects would otherwise be in orbital resonance with Neptune. Due to these
gaps, most KBOs linger between 42 and 48 A.U., where the effects from
Neptune's gravity are lowest. These objects have a wide range of masses (with objects
larger than Pluto get founded, and Earth-sized objects being theoretically possible
although not yet observed), and varying characteristics, with a variety of densities (from
rocky to fluffy) and albedos (from icy white, to dull) being observed.
Gravitational perturbations and collisions occasionally fling KBOs into the inner Solar
System. As these icy bodies approach the Sun, they heat up and begin to melt,
becoming comets. It is believed that short-period comets like Halley's comet, have their
origins in the Kuiper Belt. One interesting thing to note: If Pluto were suddenly knocked
into a comet-like orbit, it would behave like a comet and even grow a tail. As Space
Telescope Science Institute astronomer Mario Livio has stated, this is no way for a
planet to behave. Since what Kuiper predicted doesn't exactly match what is seen, and
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since he wasn't alone in making the predictions of an icy disk, many argue that it may
be inappropriate to label these objects Kuiper Belt objects, and many instead call all the
objects trans-Neptunian objects, even though some don't actually cross Neptune's orbit.
Comet OrbitKepler explained the regularity of planet motions in terms of elliptical

orbits. He discovered a relationship that relates the period (or orbital time) of a comet to
the semi-major axis (or half the long axis of the orbit).
Kepler made his discovery of the pattern of orbits long before Halley recognized that
comets were cyclic phenomena. But the relationship above is true of all motion around
the Sun, including the orbits of comets. For example, Chiron (originally classed as
an asteroid but now known to be a comet) moves on an elliptical
orbit between Saturn and Uranus, with a semi-major axis of 13.7 A.U. The cube of this
number is 2571. Thus, if the period squared is 2571, the period must be √2571 = 51
years. That is how long it takes Chiron to go around the Sun.
You can use Kepler’s third law to predict distances from periods. For example, we know
from historical records that Halley’s Comet returns about every 75 years. What is its
average distance from the Sun? The square of the period is 5625. Therefore, the cube
of the semi major axis in A.U. is also 5776. Taking the cube root on a calculator, we find
that the semi-major axis is about 18 A.U., or nearly as far as Uranus.
What is meant by the average distance of an orbit? Planets do not have extreme
elliptical orbits; they look like slightly squashed circles. In this case, the foci of
the ellipse are close together, the eccentricity is close to zero, and the semi-major axis
is not much different from the radius of a circular orbit. Comet orbits are entirely
different. Their ellipses are extremely elongated and the eccentricity is close to one. The
foci of the ellipse are very far apart. In fact, the distance of closest approach to the Sun
may be much smaller than the semi-major axis. It is therefore a good approximation to
say that the maximum distance from the Sun is twice the semi-major axis. At its farthest
point, Halley’s Comet reaches about 36 A.U. from the Sun, between the orbits
of Neptune and Pluto.
Comets in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud are at distances of 100 and 100,000 A.U.
from the Sun. What would be the period of such comets? Remember that the maximum
distance is twice the semi-major axis. If you insert the semi-major axis values of 50 and
50,000 in the equation for Kepler’s third law, you deduce periods of about 350 years
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and 11 million years, respectively!
The Largest Kuiper Belt Objects
Artistic comparison
of Eris, Pluto, Makemake,
Haumea, Sedna, 2007
OR10, Quaoar, Orcus, and Earth.
Quaoar (pronounced kwah-o-

wahr) was discovered in 2002.
At half the size of Pluto, it was
the largest object to be
discovered in the solar
system since Charon was
found in 1978. Quaoar orbits
1.6 billion kilometers (1 billion
miles) beyond Pluto, or 42
A.U. (4 billion miles) from
Earth. This orbit puts it within
the Kuiper Belt, a group of bodies that orbit beyond Neptune near Pluto. Like most of
these objects, Quaoar is probably made of ice and rock in roughly equal portions. Water
ice has been detected on the surface, and other ices are probably also present, such as
frozen methane and frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice).
Although Quaoar was the largest Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) known at that time, new
1,000-km-scale objects in the outer Solar System are being discovered every year.
Makemake and Haumea are both over 1000 km in diameter and Varuna and 2002
AW197 are both about 900 km in diameter. An object called 2004 DW may now be the
largest known KBO — it may be even bigger than Quaoar. However, most KBOs are
probably only about 100 km across. The exact sizes of these objects are uncertain
because they are so far away. Most telescopes can't resolve them, so estimates on their
sizes have to be made from measurements of how much light the bodies reflect and
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how much heat they emit.
Most of these large bodies travel in orbits similar to Pluto's orbit. This indicates that
Pluto is not alone in the outer regions of the Solar System, although it is still by far the
largest of these objects. Pluto is also unique in that it has by far the
highest albedo (or brightness) of any known KBO.
Introduction to Meteorites
The Black Stone, surrounded by its silver frame and the black cloth kiswahon
the Kaaba in Mecca. This stone is believed to be a meteorite.
Long ago, stones from the sky were a source of awe.

Meteorites have been found buried with American Indian
artifacts in Mexico and revered as a sacred possession by a
tribe in Alaska. A stone worshipped in the Temple of Diana at
Ephesus (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world)
reportedly fell from the sky. The "Black Stone," enshrined
around 600 A.D. or earlier in the sacred Muslim shrine in
Mecca, is also believed to be a meteorite. They have even had
a deep influence in history; in 1492, a meteorite fell at
Ensisheim, France. Emperor Maximilian was in residence nearby, and he took the fall
as a sign that he should go on a Crusade.

E. F. F. Chladni
Even when the origins of meteors are unknown, it is often clear that
they are something unusual. These half-melted, often mostly metal
rocks are typically significantly more dense than their Earth-formed
rocky cousins, and this high density means that meteors consistently
outweigh same-size Earth cousins. It took a long time for a scientific
explanation of these strange rocks to emerge. In the 1700s, many naturalists still felt
that the idea of stones falling from the sky was no more than superstition. One scientist,
however, decided to do a careful investigation rather than just dismiss this idea. In
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1794, German physicist named E.F.F. Chladni reported that the Ensisheim stone and
other supposed celestial stones seemed similar to each other, and different from normal
terrestrial stones. He concluded that these "meteorites did indeed fall from the sky."
This conclusion was controversial, and many people still refused to accept a celestial
origin for these stones. Upon hearing that a meteorite had fallen in Connecticut,
Thomas Jefferson, himself an accomplished naturalist, is supposed to have joked, "It is
easier to believe that Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from
heaven." The French Academy — that bastion of rational thinking — dismissed
meteorites as superstition. But when a meteorite exploded over a French town in 1803,
pelting the area with stones, the Academy sent the noted physicist J.B. Biot to
investigate. His report became one of the historically important documents of science.
Biot constructed an irrefutable chain of evidence from eyewitness accounts,
measurements of the 12 square kilometer area of impacts, and specimens of the
meteorites themselves. This report was instrumental in establishing that stones do
indeed fall from the sky.

The Peekskill Meteorite that hit a car in 1992.
Rocks in space may seem remote from human affairs, and

generally they are, but they can have a rather strong influence
when they collide with the Earth. Although the Earth shows
evidence of the destruction meteorite impacts can cause (in
the form of impact crater scars), human encounters with falling
meteorites are extremely rare. Nobody has been killed by a
meteorite in recorded history, although a dog was killed in
Nakhla, Egypt in 1911. In the last hundred years, a few people
in the United States have experienced close encounters. In 1938, an Illinois woman
heard a crash in her garage, and found a meteorite lying on her car seat. Some years
later, an Alabama woman was seriously injured by a ricocheting meteorite that hit her in
the hip. A house in Wethersfield, Connecticut was hit in 1971, and then another house
just a mile away was hit 11 years later! In 1991, two boys in Noblesville, Indiana heard a
whistle and a thud, and looked down to see a small 4-inch meteorite lying in a crater in
the sidewalk. One year later, a woman found a 30-pound meteorite that had smashed
through the trunk of her 1980 Chevy Malibu, fusing to the metal of the car. She was
offered $69,000 for the wreck, which was far more than the car was worth before it was
damaged! Don't let this summary worry you, though. Your chances of being hit by a
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meteorite are tiny — statistically speaking, your bathtub is far more dangerous.
Large meteorites are rare. Only a few boulder-sized meteorites are recovered each
year. In 1972, an object weighing about 1,000 tons just missed the Earth, skipping off
the outer atmosphere like a stone off a pond. It was filmed from the ground and
detected by Air Force reconnaissance satellites. Had it fallen through the atmosphere
instead of skipping back into space, it would have caused a bomb-sized explosion in
Canada. Objects weighing 10,000 tons, like the object that caused the Tunguska
explosion of 1908, are large enough to cause nuclear-scale blasts (although they don't
leave behind the high radiation). This occurs every few centuries, on average. The
Chelyabinsk airburst in Russia in 2014 was the most recent example. Larger blasts,
thousands of years apart, may form craters many kilometers across.
Meteorite find in situ on desert pavement, Rub' al Khali, Saudi Arabia.
Many big meteorites have been identified, but scientists are always
looking for more. A fine rain of meteorites, ranging from the size of
dust grains to pebbles, reaches the surface of the Earth all the
time. They are difficult to notice on most terrain, since they often look like regular
terrestrial rocks, but they stand out on the blue-white surface of the Antarctic icepack.
Scientists regularly travel there and sweep the surface with sticky rollers, to gather more
of this valuable evidence from space. Another popular meteorite-hunting area is the
Saharan desert in northwest Africa, which has revealed many interesting meteorites on
it's ever changing sandy surface in the past few decades.
Much of what we know about asteroids comes from meteorites. Modern evidence
suggests that most of them are fragments of Earth-crossing asteroids that were ejected
from the main asteroid belt. So by a fortunate chance, we get "free samples" of cosmic
debris left over from the formation of the Solar System, and occasionally even samples
of other planets! They allow us to reconstruct many of the processes that led to the
formation of the Earth and the other planets.
Origin of Meteorites
Every once in while a strange, half-melted, often mostly metal rock gets found on the
surface of the planet. These non-terrestrial impactors have many different origins, but
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thanks to science we are able to tell their stories. Called

meteorites, these rocks may come from asteroids, Mars, or
even the Moon. After decades of study, scientists have
begun to understand how meteorites formed and what they
can tell us about the ancient history of the Solar System. The
vast majority of meteorites come from asteroids, and they
are the most ancient rocks studied by geologists. These
asteroids formed at the beginning of the Solar System, and
at various times in the last four and a half billion years they were broken apart or had
fragments chipped off during collisions. Some of these resulting fragments were thrown
into orbits that eventually intersected Earth's. Luckily, the majority of these objects are
small, although occasionally many kilometer across objects have threatened our planet.
Not all the pieces of space debris that intersect the Earth's atmosphere make it to our
planet's surface. The majority of pebble and rock sized meteors burn up in the Earth's
atmosphere as so-called "shooting stars." Only larger (and often the densest) asteroids
and asteroid fragments can survive passage the journey through the atmosphere
without the frictional heating tearing them complete apart or vaporizing them. While it is
a very bad thing when full-sized asteroids hit the planet — this is what killed the
dinosaurs, after all — it is scientifically beneficial to have a steady supply of smaller
rocks make landfall.
Murnpeowie meteorite, a thumbprinted iron meteorite.
A stony meteorite known as a chondrite.
We are just starting to be able to sample asteroids

directly, and today the majority of what we know about
these building blocks of the Solar System we've learned
from the bits and pieces that have made it on their own to
the surface of the planet Earth. Scientists have been able
to connect different groups of meteorites with classes of
asteroids by comparing their reflectance spectra (by how they reflect light of different
colors). Certain types of stony meteorites correspond to stony asteroids, iron meteorites
match the spectra of metal-rich asteroids, and carbonaceous meteorites are consistent
with the dark C-type asteroids. The stony meteorites are samples of asteroids' outer
rocky layers, or of undifferentiated asteroids, and the metallic ones are samples of
dense cores inside differentiated bodies, analogous to the Earth's iron core. The
carbonaceous ones are samples of the black, carbonaceous asteroids (and perhaps
comets) of the outer Solar System. (see the article on types of asteroids to learn more.)
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More than 80% of meteorites are from stony bodies that never differentiated, which
indicates that their parent asteroids (or portions of them) never got hot enough to melt
completely. About 1 in 10 meteorites are lava-like rocks that once melted and then
solidified. This gives us proof that some asteroids reached high enough temperatures to
melt, while others did not. The heating mechanisms are unknown; maybe it was
concentrations of radioactive minerals, magnetic or electrical effects, or shock waves —
all these sources have been suggested. Whatever the heat source, the iron meteorites
(4%) and stony-iron mixtures (1%) show that some asteroids differentiated completely
(like the oil and water separating in Italian dressing left to stand in the refrigerator),
forming iron cores with a stony-iron interface between the core and a silicate mantle at
the surface.
Some carbonaceous chondrites. From left to right: Allende, Tagish

Lake and Murchison.
Scientists are particularly interested in the

primitive, unmelted types of asteroids called
chondrites. Most stony meteorites, and all
carbonaceous meteorites, are chondrites. These
rocks are primeval fragments of the Solar System's
original mineral grains. Dating by the technique of
radioactive decay shows that the most primitive meteorites formed during a "brief"
interval of only 20 million years, some 4.6 billion years ago. In other words, if the history
of the Solar System were reduced to one year, the majority of asteroid-sized building
blocks of planets had formed and melted by January 2. This interval marked the birth of
planetary material. Other types of radioactive dating show that major of collisions
among these bodies happened throughout the interval from 4.6 to about 4.4 billion
years ago. While sporadic collisions continued to smash other asteroids together with
one another and with planets throughout Solar System, this are much safer today then
they were in the earliest days of our Solar System. While asteroids continue to attack,
we have no reason to fear planet destroying object will wreck any near-future
tomorrows.
Types of Meteorites
Thousands of rocks are mistakenly identified as meteorites every year. Many people
assume that every odd-looking rock they find is a meteorite. The truth is, meteorites are
not only the rarest type of rock, but they often appear quite normal. There are some
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ways you can recognize a meteorite just by looking at it, but in general, a trained
scientist needs to test a piece of the rock in a laboratory to determine if it really has an
extraterrestrial origin. Of course, if you actually witness a rock fall from the sky, it's most
likely a meteorite. This is called a meteorite "fall" as opposed to a meteorite "find" (which
is when a meteorite is discovered after it's already on the ground.)
Park Forest Meteorite (large individual with dark fusion crust) - the only rock
from space to impact in a modern urban area is the Park Forest Meteorite.
The most obvious characteristic of a freshly fallen

meteorite is its fusion crust. This is a shiny, dark brown or
black layer on the outside of a meteorite. Because of their
relative orbital motions, interplanetary bodies collide with
the Earth at very high speeds, usually 11 to 60 kilometers
per second (24,000 to 134,000 mph). At these speeds, the
impacting material is heated by friction with the air, and the outer layer of a meteorite
will melt. Blobs of liquid rock ooze off as it travels through the atmosphere, leaving
characteristic thumbprint-shaped hollows. Dust grains to pea-sized pieces of material
burn up before striking the ground, but larger pieces may not break apart and burn up
completely — some fragment (or fragments!) may reach the ground. Since meteorites
pass through the atmosphere too quickly for their interiors to be strongly heated, stories
of meteorites remaining red-hot for hours after falling are untrue. Instead, the melted
outer layer cools quickly,forming a thin, glassy fusion crust. Meteorites that have been
lying on the Earth's surface for an extended time often lack a fusion crust, because the
thin, fragile layer erodes away easily.
Stony meteorite, H5 chondrite
Most meteorites belong to the group of stony meteorites, and

the majority of these are chondrites. Chondrites are the most
primitive, ancient rocks in the Solar System. They are named
after the tiny spheres of rock they contain, called chondrules. If
you look very closely at these meteorites, you will see the
millimeter-sized round balls sticking out of the surrounding rock. These chondrules were
originally free-floating droplets of molten rock in the solar nebula. They cooled and
solidified quickly, and were later incorporated into larger bodies that became asteroids.
These chondrites have survived since the early Solar System, meaning the asteroids
they were originally a part of (their parent bodies) never completely melted or
differentiated into layers. Because the metal was never separated out into a core, bits of
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metal are mixed throughout some chondrites. Some other types of chondrites contain
high amounts of dark carbonaceous material. Some of these rocks contain organic
material (carbon based molecules), as well as evidence that they were exposed to liquid
water in the past. Liquid water could have been in the form of impacting craters.
Campo del Cielo iron meteorite with natural hole, 576 grams
Some stony meteorites are not chondrites. They are pieces

of crustal rock from a parent body that melted and
differentiated into separate layers. Some of these are from
large asteroids with enough internal heat to drive volcanism,
and some are from other planetary surfaces. When
geologists studied the lunar samples returned to Earth in
the 1960s, they were able to recognize a dozen mysterious rocks that had been found
lying on Antarctic ice flows — rocks that did not match any known terrestrial geology.
They were Moon rocks, too! This was proof that material could be blasted off the Moon's
surface by a meteoric impact, drift through space, and then fall to Earth. Martian rocks
can reach our planet by the same scenario. Since we realized this, we've found about
fifty Martian meteorites. At first glance, these meteorites are difficult to differentiate from
terrestrial rocks, because they appear so similar. They're a result of the same geological
processes, so they have most of the same minerals and textures as Earth rocks.
Iron meteorites are rare, but they are much more easily recognized. They are very
dense alloys of almost pure iron and a small amount of nickel. When the metal
solidified, it formed crystals. These crystals are visible in a distinctive Widmanstätten
pattern when an iron meteorite's polished surface is etched with a weak solution of acid.
These meteorites are also samples from a differentiated body — in this case, the
metallic core. At some point after the parent body separated into a core, mantle, and
crust, it experienced a collision big enough to disrupt it. Some fragments that were
originally in the core were thrown into Earth-crossing orbits, to eventually land on the
surface of our planet.
The last, and least common, type of meteorite is a combination of stone and iron. The
stony part of these meteorites usually consists of a mineral called olivine, which is the
same mineral that makes up the Earth's mantle. These rocks are also samples of a
differentiated asteroid, presumably from the boundary between the metallic core and the
olivine mantle.
Not all meteors can be clearly placed in one category or another. Brecciated meteorites
can be mixtures of any of the above types of meteorites. They're formed when
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fragments of rock, often radically different types, are jumbled together and welded by
pressure and heat into one rock. Such fragmentation and welding is caused when two
asteroids collide, further proof of the violent history of many asteroids. Because two
different types of asteroids may be jumbled together during the collision, the brecciated
meteorites can contain several kinds of rock.
Probability and Impacts
Science allows us to predict some events with virtual certainty. For example, the Sun
will certainly rise tomorrow. If you let go of a brick, it will certainly fall to the ground. The
winter will certainly be colder than the summer. But some events in nature do not occur
with any kind of certainty. We use the concept of probability to describe these types of
situations in science.
A probability is a pure number with no units. Its maximum value is one — the event
definitely occurs or always occurs. Its minimum value is zero — the event does not
occur or never occurs. You might hear talk about odds of 10 to 1 against a team winning
a game, or a 10% chance of rain. These are both ways of describing a probability of 0.1.
If there is more than one possible outcome, each outcome can be assigned a
probability. A coin can land heads or tails. In terms of probability, we would say p heads =
ptails = 0.5 (in other words, there's a 50% probability of either outcome) and p heads + ptails = 1
(or, there is a 100% probability that the coin will land on either heads or tails). We are
saying that we know all the possible outcomes, and that the coin is exceedingly unlikely
to land on its edge! If we were rolling a six-sided die, we would describe the possible
outcomes as p1 = p2 = p3 = p4 = p5 = p6 = 1/6 = 0.167. We also know that p1 + p2 + p3 +
p4 + p5 + p6 = 1.
The examples of coin tossing and dice rolling are situations where the selection of
outcomes is random. Remember that the use of probability does not imply a random
process. For example, a professional baseball player might have a batting average of
0.330, which means any particular time he comes to bat he has a 1 in 3 chance of
getting a hit. But if you stood at the plate and swung randomly at 90 mph fastballs, your
probability of getting a hit would be much lower. In general, if there are n equally
probable outcomes (like in the case of the dice), the probability of each outcome is:
pn = 1 / n
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The rule of addition for probabilities says:
pA or B = pA + pB
This rule applies if the probabilities are mutually exclusive, or disjoint. In other words, a
coin can't land on both heads and tails, and a die has to land on only one of its six
sides. So the probability of it landing on any particular side is 1/6. The sum of all the
possible outcomes is 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 = 1. For independent events or
independent properties, we combine probabilities using the multiplication rule:
pA and B = pA × pB
Impact on Jupiter
Astronomers around the world watched breathlessly as the fragments plowed into the
planet over a period of days in the summer of 1994. Unfortunately, the impact sites
were just around the edge of Jupiter on the far side, but photos from the Hubble Space
Telescope revealed huge clouds rising above the edge of Jupiter's disk as a result of
the explosion. Jupiter's rotation brought the impact sites into view a few hours later,
where photos revealed huge black clouds, probably created by the black dust in each
fragment.
At the time, it was believed that this impact was a once in 500 year event. In the 2000s
it became apparent this was a complete miscalculation. With the advent of low cost,
highly sensitive detectors, Jupiter came under nearly
constant vigilance by amateur astronomers. They have
captured in their images multiple flashes associated
with small impacts. It's now believed that Jupiter
regularly vacuums up small objects zipping through the
middle of the Solar System.
Interplanetary Opportunity
While asteroids and comets pose a potential threat,

they also present a long-term interplanetary
opportunity. Scientists project that we will have
depleted many of the Earth's natural resources by the
middle of the 21st century. The solution to resource
VISION MISSION

DIFFUN CAMPUS
shortages may be the mining of asteroids. Based on meteorite samples, some Earth-

approaching asteroids must contain not only pure nickel-iron alloys, but also ores of
economically important platinum-group metals. These asteroids could be mined in
space using the freely available solar energy that constantly streams through space.
Masses of metal worth many billions of dollars — enough to satisfy Earth's need of
some metals for decades — should be obtainable from individual kilometer-scale and
smaller asteroids. Another resource on asteroids is a high abundance of "rare Earth"
elements, which are expensive and heavily used in the semiconductor and electronics
industries. Studies are already underway to examine the feasibility of flying to Earth-
approaching asteroids for economic and scientific exploration. In terms of energy
expenditure, some of them are actually easier to reach than the Moon!
If asteroid resources could be harvested and developed in space, then mining,

processing and the consequent industrial pollution would decline on Earth. Instead of a
purely defensive response to the asteroid threat, we could invest in a positive program
to expand our knowledge about asteroids. The ability to reach asteroids and deflect
them from one orbit to another would emerge as a by-product of such a program, and
would also solve the problem of the asteroid threat. At the same time, such a program
would help to resolve Earth's environmental problems.
Enrichment Summarize relations between the bodies and particles responsible for
Activities a. meteors
b. comets
c. the zodiacal light
d. asteroids and
e. meteorites.
f. What is the typical size or range in size of each type of object?
g. Draw a diagram to show which part of the solar system each type of object
inhabits.
Comprehension
Check
References
VISION MISSION

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QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

SELF-PACED LEARNING MODULE

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Module 1 Asteroid, Comets and Meteoroids

The asteroid belt (shown in white) is located between the

Asteroids are rocky and metallic interplanetary

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Astronomers discovered asteroids while looking for a

A diagram showing the five Lagrangian points in a two-body system with

Several subgroups of asteroids do not orbit in the main

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Some asteroids come close enough to be of special interest to Earth-dwellers. These

Surveys for Earth Crossing Asteroids

Astronomers have discovered several thousand asteroids that approach the

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

The number of near earth asteroids

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

For that reason, an international organization dedicated to detecting these potentially

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Even before a spacecraft went into orbit around an asteroid, astronomers had a good

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

A photograph of Halley's comet taken in 1986.

Comets are the most visually spectacular of the small

Close up of Comet Hartley 2. This image was captured by NASA's EPOXI

Comets have several parts. The bright, diffuse part is

A telescope reveals a brilliant, star-like point of light at the center of the comet head.

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

cloud of gas and dust.

Comet 17P/Holmes with the Ion Tail

Comet tails often stretch more than an astronomical unit, longer

Early Observations of Comets

A photograph of Halley's comet taken in 1986.

In ancient times, before science explained the phenomena,

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

These superstitions were eventually debunked by the English astronomer Edmond

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Structure of the Comet Nucleus

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Enchanced-color image of Deimos, a moon of Mars, captured by the HiRISE

Halley's nucleus is as dark as black velvet. It reflects only 4% of

A NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of

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COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Progress on the question of comets' composition came in 1868 when English