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Meteoroids, Meteors, Meteorites

Meteoroids--small rocky or metallic particles throughout the solar system Meteors-- entering Earths atmosphere, friction causes heat and disintegration -Meteorites--remnants surviving the fall to hit the ground

Where Do Meteorites Come From?


Some meteorites are primitive leftovers of the formation of the solar system, possibly from asteroids. Some meteorites travel on highly elliptical orbits from the asteroid belt to cross the Earths path, due to collisions between asteroids.

Many meteor showers are associated with comets, but most of these are small particles that burn up in the atmosphere.

Meteor showers are caused by Comets! Many meteor showers are Comets path associated with comets. Earth

The dust tail contains small particles evaporated from the comet.

These particles remain in orbit about the Sun.


If the Earth passes through the dust cloud, then meteors may be seen.

Types of Meteorites
Meteors are: Early solar system leftovers

Iron 4% (from core of differentiated asteroids) Stony 95% (from surface of differentiated asteroids) Stony-iron (from undifferentiated asteroids) Rare class of Stony Carbonatious Chondrites- C, Si, Mg covered with dark carbon organic compounds, maybe primordial Material.

Meteorite Types

Stony

95% Most common Rocky, carbon, silicates usually

Irons 4% of all are nickel-iron


Iron meteorites often have a pattern of thumbprints caused by fiery re-entry The hot molten iron is pushed back by the air and solidifies.
Iron meteorite cut, polished and etched with dilute acid.

Carbonaceous
A specialty of some carbonaceous meteorites is the evidence that they have been processed by liquid water.

We believe the parent meteorite bodies must have been sufficiently warm and pressured at some period in history for liquid water to flow.

The Barringer crater, also called the Meteorite Crater in Arizona was formed by the impact 50,000 years ago of a 300,000 ton iron meteorite.

The crater is 550 feet deep and nearly a mile wide. About 30 tons of iron have been recovered from the surrounding plains.

Happy Hunting Ground: The Antarctic


Antarctic ice sheets have proved to be very fruitful grounds for hunting meteorites. They are particularly well suited to identifying falls: the fragments stand out clearly against the blue ice.

Picture: (left) NASA/JSC (right) Dr Ursula Marvin, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Ages of Rocks
The technique used today to measure the ages of rocks is radioactive or radioisotope dating. The advent of radioactive dating of rocks once and for all set geological timescales on an absolute, as opposed to a relative basis.

Some of the falling rocks from space survive the trip through the atmosphere

Origin Of some Meteorite

Large Meteor over the Tetons (1972)

Aphelion distance 2.3 AU Diameter 3 to 10 m Seen at height of ~50 km skipped out of atmosphere

Asteroids

Main Belt
The so-called Main Belt of asteroids lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, with semimajor axes 2.2 to 3.3 AU.

There are about Facts About Asteroids 150,000 asteroids Total mass < Moon cataloged.

In spite of what this diagram might imply, the asteroid belt is relatively empty.
The average distance between any 2 is more than 1 million km.

Asteroid orbits
Asteroids, like planets, have orbits close to ecliptic plane, small tilt, and nearly circular orbits. Asteroids are basically chunks of rock left over from the formation of the solar system. As Jupiter formed it stirred up velocities in what would become the asteroid belt.

Higher velocities meant planetesimals destroying each other rather than accreting.

Asteroid Composition
Three types based on appearance and Composition C : carbon & silicates
Very dark, primitive (old)

S : stony
No carbon, lighter appearance Abundance of silicates M : metal (iron) Remnants of the core of shattered larger body We probably now know almost all of the asteroids larger than 25 km across, and 50% of the ones down to 10 km in size.

Orbits: Gaps
In the main belt, orbital distances are not distributed evenly. The gaps in the orbital distances are known as resonance, or Kirkwood gaps. The resonance effect is the gravity of Jupiter: the tugs from Jupiter s gravity eventually altered the orbit.

Outside The Main Belt


Outside the main belt, the gravity of Jupiter makes most nearby orbits unstable.

There are five Lagrangian points, but in terms of asteroids, the L4 and L5 points equidistant from Jupiter and the Sun are most important. These are regions of gravitational stability for small bodies in the fields of two larger bodies.

The first was The L4 and L5 points of Jupiter are named Hektor occupied by hundreds of asteroids. and all others named after heroes of the Trojan War. Hence, these asteroids are named Trojan Asteroids. They are primitive bodies, trapped there since the birth of Jupiter.

Near-Earth Objects
Only about 1% of asteroids cross the Earths orbit, but we are very interested in them! The first one discovered was Apollo in 1948: for this reason Earth-crossing asteroids are called Apollo asteroids. The largest Earth-crosser is Eros (30 km).

Meeting Asteroids Up-Close


Spacecraft have made close-flybys of 4 asteroids, and even landed on one! The first two significant encounters were due to the Galileo spacecraft, en route to Jupiter, which made flybys of : Gaspra The NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft made two encounters:

A flyby of Mathilde in 1997 ( Mathil-de)


Orbited and finally landed on Eros in 2000.

951 Gaspra S-type (Gasp-ra)


Gaspra on October 29, 1991. The highresolution image was taken at a distance of 5300 km. Gaspra measures 19x12x11 km More than 600 small craters are visible here, from 100-500m in size.
The highly irregular shape indicates massive collision(s) in the past which nearly destroyed it.

243 Ida and Dactyl

S-Type

Galileo encountered Ida on August 28, 1993, finding an irregular body 58x24x21 km in size. The main discovery was that Ida is accompanied by a small moon, Dactyl, the first natural satellite of an asteroid ever discovered.

NEAR Shoemaker The Near-Earth


Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft, was launched in 1996, to encounter, orbit and land on asteroid 433 Eros. It was later named Near Shoemaker.
The spacecraft continued to operate for more than a week on the surface.

Close up of Eros

The Last photo before the hard landing

The Big One


Do we ever get hit?

Yes! The questions are when and by what?

Earth Impacts
Classify events by size Small Medium Large Small:
Happens all the time, most are very tiny (pea sized) Will burn up or break up in the atmosphere Meteors! (Shooting stars) 3-5/hr on a typical night
100 tons per day Meteor showers & storms From the trail of a comet, each shower happens once every year

Earth Impacts: Medium


Medium: 50 m - 1 km across at top of atmosphere Only one every century Causes severe local damage Two great examples from recent history.
The Tunguska event

The Berringer Crater, in Arizona

(1) The Tunguska event


Happened in 1908 ,Tunguska, Siberia, Russia, flattened a forest ,where 2,150 square km flattened, and 1/2 of the area was burned.
Early in the morning the object was visible with a tail 800 km long. The object vaporized at an altitude of 6 km, leaving no crater. Herds of reindeer burned, a few human fatalities.

Night skies in Western Europe were bright enough to read a book by the light. The impactor was probably a comet 30 m across.

(2) The Berringer Crater, in Arizona

Happened 50,000 years ago


The crater: 1,200 m across ,200 m deep The impactor?

An iron meteorite, 100 m across


Going 40,000 mph!
Explosion = 20 million tons of TNT a moderate atomic bomb

The Berringer crater, Arizona

Earth Impacts: Large


Large: more than 1 km across at top of atmosphere
One every few million years Severe global effects More than 2 km can cause mass extinction Most recent: 65 million years ago

The K Impact 60 % of all species on Earth disappeared, including the dinosaurs, 65 my ago, at the end of the Cretaceous (K) period.
Clay layer of that age over much of world has high Iridium levels Iridium is rare in earths crust, but is common in asteroids and (sort of) in comets

The K extinction event


The impactor: Probably a comet Size: ~ 10 km across Energy released: 100 million million tons of TNT (5 million atomic bombs)

Some day..... possible

Barer of Bad News


Comets - History

66 Fall of Jerusalem 451 Rise of Attila the Hun 1066 Norman conquest of England 1456 Turks invade Europe; Pope prays for deliverance from the Turk, and the comet Once believed to be atmospheric phenomena Tycho Brahe proved they were not atmospheric 1700 & 1758 Edmond Halley predicts return of Halleys comet, & comet returns on schedule 1835 & 1910 Mark Twain & Halleys comet Usually get one bright comet per decade

Famous Comets - Halleys Comet

Comet of 1577

A comet is a great blob of ice and dust, a dirty snowball. A comet far from the sun has only a nucleus. The ice ball may be anywhere from 1 mile to a dozen miles in diameter. As the comet gets closer to the sun , solar heat vaporizes more and more of the frozen gases, and it spews out into space, blowing some dust out also. The gas and dust form a form a hazy cloud around the nucleus called the Coma.

Nucleus (~ 1 km 20 km)
Dirty snowball (icy composition)

Lots of dust and gas


Jets ignite when they hit sunlight. Coma (~ 1 million km) Lots of gas and dust produced by jets from nucleus Coma forms only when comet passes inside ice line

Comet Nuclei
Thought to be ice, but mostly Hydrogen is observed. Darker than coal. Jets of gas and dust venting from core are observed.

Comets often have 2 tails pointing away from the sun Type 1 is the gas tail straight with emission lines. (Ion) Type 2 is the dust trail curved with reflection spectra
tails, may be > AU long

Comets
Ion Tail

Dust Tail

Coma (Nucleus too small to see)

Comet orbits
Comets have the most eccentric (elliptical) orbits of any solar system object,they spend most of their time far from Sun. Comet's orbital plane can have any tilt (inclination) relative to ecliptic plane. Prograde orbit is in same direction as planets orbit and Retrograde orbit is in opposite direction .Comet orbits are equally divided between prograde and retrograde.

Comets Are of Two Kinds


Long Period Comets
seen only once; periods of at least 100,000 yr come in from all angles originate just outside of the Solar System (the Oort Cloud), thought to be from the Solar Nebula material

Short Period Comets


periods of years to centuries more closely confined to the ecliptic plane

originate mainly in the Kuiper Belt (Ki-per) ices some what processed by the Sun
Example: Halleys comet

Where do comets come from?


Solar System, 39 AU

Kuiper Belt, 50-200 AU


Oort Cloud, 1-2 Light years

Short period comets-Kuiper Belt

(Ki-per)

In 1951 Gerard Kuiper speculated that there was material farther out than Pluto, from which certain comets originated. These objects are typically 10 to 100 km in diameter, Hundreds are now known.

The Oort Cloud


Most (original) orbits have aphelions of >1000 AU Passing stars deflect comets in from the cloud

Shoemaker-Levy-9 in 1993

SL-9 passed close to Jupiter (within Roche limit) in July 1992 Gravitational forces pulled the comet apart into fragments Each fragment on slightly different orbit, headed back towards Jupiter Impacts on Jupiter over period 16 22 July 1994
First real opportunity to watch large impacts happen and with ~1 year advance notice. Impacts into atmosphere not into surface

SL-9: Impacts on Jupiter

Comets near the Sun

The End
( A possibility)

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