AST101H1 Lecture Notes - Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud, Solar Wind

• School: UTSG
• Department: Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Course: AST101H1
• Professor: Michael Reid

Document Summary

Rocky and metal some have icy mantle (eg ceres) Some have carbonaceous (carbon molecules) chondrite (primitive asteroids) from differentiation and melting of planetesimals in beginning of solar system. Total mass is about 4% of our moon (very tiny and insignificant) Can find them in asteroid belt (between mars and jupiter) But can also find them in other parts of solar system (orbiting jupiter called. Trojan) special because they will never collide with jupiter because the orbital period of jupiter is same of trojan asteroids) gravitational attraction is completely balanced and they"ll never collide with each other. Important because they can hit up: eg. Just a 100m one destroyed a whole forest even though never hit earth. As it gets close to sun, suns radiation spews out the vapor (tail); solar wind hits on the coma and it squeezes out the vaporized material and forms the tail: through solar radiation and solar wind.