Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors
book by Giles Sparrow
By Jayden Stickel
Lexile unknown, Pages 29 not counting the Glossary and Index.
Introduction
The book Destination Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors is about comets, asteroids, and meteors.This book has facts on asteroids, comets, and meteors. What I already know about them is they're all in space, and are all rocks. And asteroids, comet, and meteors are space rocks.
Asteroid Caption
This is an asteroid in space. This asteroid has many craters on it.
Asteroids
Many Astronomers think most asteroids are remains of smashed planets in the solar systems early days. If on Ceres you won't come down for more than a minute. Also in between Mars and Jupiter is the asteroid belt. The asteroid belt has a lot of asteroids in it. There are only a few asteroids have enough asteroids to pull it self in a ball shape. The other asteroids that don't have enough gravity to pull itself into a ball shape have an irregular shape. Mathilde is an asteroid slightly denser than water. The first asteroid ever discovered was a mistake and it was discovered by an astronomer named Giuseppe Piazzi. Piazzi thought he had discovered a new planet and named it Ceres , but later astronomers found thought that Ceres was to small to be a planet . most astronomers ignored asteroids until NEAs might hit Earth some day.In 2005 a Japanese probe called MUSES-C attempted a sample of a NEA asteroid called Itokawa, but MUSES-C missed, and astronomers think that it some dust around the asteroid, and the probe came back in 2010
Comets
Comets are made out of ice, dust, and rock. Comets are also known as dirty snowballs. When you try to see one all you'll see is a black stone stone tumbling slowly through space. If you land on the comets dark side and you dig down into the dust and soon you find paler material ice. As the comet gets closer to the Sun the ice melts and water can't exist in the vacuum of so the ice turns directly into water vapor. If you are in a space shuttle and you see a ball made out of gas and ice grains you see the coma a coma can grow up to 100,000 wide. If you decide to fly further away than the tail begins to grow. From a distance you can see two tails a yellow and a blue tail. The blue tail is made out of gas blown from the come by the solar wind.The blue tail glows blue the solar wind makes the atoms give out light. The yellow tail is made out of dust blown from the suns radiation. Far away beyond the planets lies the Oort Cloud.The Oort Cloud has several trillion comet like bodies in its vast sphere around the solar system. Comets from the Kuiper Belt travel more quickly which spreads out beyond Neptune. In 1577, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe showed that comets were traveling far out in space and were traveling back around the sun. Throughout history, people have seen comets as omens of disaster, or great events. Halley's Comet is named after Edmond Halley an English astronomer who predicted of Halley's Comet. In 1986 NASA sent a probe called the International Cometary Explorer the gas tail of the comet Giacobini- Zinner. The International Cometary Explorer showed that the comets's nucleus was only about 1.6 miles wide.
Meteors and metorites
meteors are also known as shooting stars. Meteors hit Earths atmosphere at such great speeds up to 165,000 miles per hour. Manley there are about 10 shooting stars an hour, but when a meteor shower happens shooting stars come about once a minute. Astronomers think that most meteorites are swept out of the asteroid belt by Jupiter's gravity. There are four types of meteorites. One of those types are chondrites. Chondrite asteroids have glassy chondrules in them. Scientist think that chondrules are formed in tiny droplets in the cloud of gas and dust that circled the sun. Ceres is made out of chondrules. The second type of meteorite is achondrite. These meteorites are made from chondrules formed together to for a single lump of rock. The third kind of meteorites are iron. These meteorites are usually made out of iron and nickel. Iron meteorites originally formed from the core of planetesimals. the final kind of meteorites are stony-iron meteorites. These meteorites are the rarest of them all.They consist of crystals embedded in metal, and they may have formed around the edge of planetesimal cores. In 1908 a 1,000,000 ton comet hit the Earth. The comet exploded over the Tunguska River in Siberia and flattened 770 square miles of forest. This event was known as the Tunguska event, and it was visible 500 miles away. This impact on Earth was the one thought to have helped kill the dinosaurs. Many astronomers think a comet 6 miles wide hit the Gulf of Mexico around this time. If a similar impact happened most of the animals including people would die. If astronauts would try to make a base on an asteroid they could mine on it and maybe find some valuable resources. If the astronauts found these resources they could repair equipment and change space travel from expensive exploration into a business.
Huge Rocks
This picture is in my on page 28. At first I thought it was talking about the 1,000,000 ton asteroid that hit the Tunguska River. But when I read the caption it talked about how astronomers make sure space rocks hit Earth without warning. So now I think it is a picture of a huge asteroid hitting the Earth for like the explosion that could happen if a giant space rock hit the Earth.
Author's Purpose
The author's purpose of this book is to give facts the reader about asteroids, comets, and meteors. My book talks about things that are different about asteroids, comets, and meteors. Things that are different about asteroids, comets, and meteors is asteroids have a big area between Mars and Jupiter called the asteroid belt. Comets have more ice and water and also orbits the have tails which are different from each other. And finally the book tells that meteors are also known as shooting stars and there are four kinds of meteorites.