AST 1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud, Comet
Document Summary
Meteoroids, asteroids, and comets asteroids and comets - orbit the sun, small bodies, leftovers from solar system. Asteroids are generally rocky objs in the inner solar system (closer to sun) Are small and cold, sizes are best determined from infrared measurements. Glue all of the asteroids together in the belt & u get a ball the mass of the moon. Despite the amount of asteroids in the asteroid belt, there"s a low chance of it getting hit; but, nasa must provide shielding for the sand size (pebble) in case. Majority belong to three different groups: carbonaceous bodies, silicate bodies, and metallic iron-nickel bodies. Parts of a comet tail - narrow column of gas and dust, streams out from nucleus ion (gas) tail - mostly composed of ions, pushed back bc of the sun"s solar wind (typically blue) Dust tail - have more mass, are curved in a path between ion tail.
