The Solar System

CHAPTER 25 | METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS 553 Chondrites look like dark gray, granular rocks (Figure 25-2d). Th e classifi ...

554 PART 4^ |^ THE SOLAR SYSTEM Chondrules are small, glassy spheres found in chondrites. d c a A stony-iron meteorite cut and p ...

CHAPTER 25 | METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS 555 Th e condensing solar nebula should have incorporated volatiles and organics ...

556 PART 4^ |^ THE SOLAR SYSTEM typical meteoroid has roughly the mass of a paper clip and vaporizes at an altitude of about 80 ...

CHAPTER 25 | METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS 557 of rock that become spread along its entire orbit (■ Figure 25-6). When Earth ...

558 PART 4^ |^ THE SOLAR SYSTEM Th en, you can use triangulation to fi nd the altitude, speed, and direction of the meteor as it ...

CHAPTER 25 | METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS 559 The Asteroid Belt Th e fi rst asteroid was discovered on January 1, 1801 (the ...

PART 4 | THE SOLAR SYSTEM Most asteroids are too small for their gravity to pull them into a spherical shape. Impacts break them ...

Radar image Visual-wavelength image Vesta 13-km-deep crater Model Elevation map 500 km Elevation Dactyl Enhanced visual + infrar ...

562 PART 4^ |^ THE SOLAR SYSTEM with chaotic behavior. As an example, consider how the smooth motion of water sliding over the e ...

CHAPTER 25 | METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS 563 Odysseus, for example). Almost 2000 Trojan asteroids are known, but only the ...

564 PART 4^ |^ THE SOLAR SYSTEM collided, fragmented, and been covered with craters. Some aster- oids were perturbed by the grav ...

CHAPTER 25 | METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS 565 the smaller asteroids are fragments produced by 4.6 billion years of collisio ...

566 PART 4^ |^ THE SOLAR SYSTEM with other great comet appearances such as Comet Halley in An average person might see fi ve or ...

CHAPTER 25 | METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS 567 nuclei appear to have densities between 0.1 and 0.25 g/cm^3 , much less than ...

PART 4 | THE SOLAR SYSTEM Thecoma of a comet is the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the nucleus. It can be over 1,000,000 k ...

This dust particle was collected by spacecraft above Earth’s atmosphere. It is almost certainly from a comet. As the ices in a c ...

570 PART 4^ |^ THE SOLAR SYSTEM missions produced the surprising discovery that some comet dust is crystalline and must have for ...

CHAPTER 25 | METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS 571 the solar system, and most revolve around the sun prograde. Comet Halley, wit ...

572 PART 4^ |^ THE SOLAR SYSTEM comets from the Oort cloud and had their orbits altered by a close encounter with Jupiter. Howev ...