HIMALAI IAS - DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A COMET AND A METEOR
‘Name
That Space Rock’ — describes the difference between all those flying
rocks from space. Credit and copyright: Tim Lillis. Used by permission.
With all the various space rocks flying by and into Earth last
Friday, perhaps you’ve been wondering about the correct terminology,
since a rock from space has different names depending on what it is made
of and where it is.
Infographics artist Tim Lillis
has put together a primer of sorts, in the form of an infographic,
describing the different between a comet, asteroid, meteoroid, meteor
and meteorite.
Asteroids are generally larger chunks of rock that come from the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Sometimes their orbits get perturbed or altered and some asteroids end up coming closer to the Sun, and therefore closer to Earth.
Asteroids are generally larger chunks of rock that come from the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Sometimes their orbits get perturbed or altered and some asteroids end up coming closer to the Sun, and therefore closer to Earth.
Comets are much like asteroids, but might have a
more ice, methane, ammonia, and other compounds that develop a fuzzy,
cloud-like shell called a coma – as well as a tail — when it gets closer
to the Sun. Comets are thought to originate from two different sources:
Long-period comets (those which take more than 200 years to complete an
orbit around the Sun) originate from the Oort Cloud. Short-period
comets (those which take less than 200 years to complete an orbit around
the Sun) originate from the Kuiper Belt.
Space debris smaller than an asteroid are called meteoroids.
A meteoroid is a piece of interplanetary matter that is smaller than a
kilometer and frequently only millimeters in size. Most meteoroids that
enter the Earth’s atmosphere are so small that they vaporize completely
and never reach the planet’s surface. And when they do enter Earth’s
atmosphere, they gain a different name:
Meteors. Another name commonly used for a meteor is
a shooting star. A meteor is the flash of light that we see in the
night sky when a small chunk of interplanetary debris burns up as it
passes through our atmosphere. “Meteor” refers to the flash of light
caused by the debris, not the debris itself.
If any part of a meteoroid survives the fall through the atmosphere and lands on Earth, it is called a meteorite.
Although the vast majority of meteorites are very small, their size can
range from about a fraction of a gram (the size of a pebble) to 100
kilograms (220 lbs) or more (the size of a huge, life-destroying
boulder).
