SOLAR SYSTEM

DEBRIS
Prepared By:

JUMABEL AMOR C. ABEJERO

BEED 4A
What is SOLAR DEBRIS?
small constituents
“left overs”
What are the Solar Debris?
 Asteroids
 Meteoroid, Meteors and Meteorites
 Comets
 Kuiper Belt Objects and Oort Cloud
• Asteroids lying in a "belt" between Mars and
Jupiter. Asteroids are also called "Minor
Planets"
• Comets is dirty snowballs made of dust
trapped in water, carbon dioxide, methane
and ammonia
• Meteoriods – Rock/Icy fragments travelling in
space.
• Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects outside the
orbit of Neptune
• generally orbit
between Mars and
Jupiter.
• About 100 of them
have diameters
larger than 100
km.
• The largest is Ceres,
1000 km in diameter
and comprising
about 30% of the
total mass of the
asteroid belt.
• All large asteroids
are round because
the force of gravity
overwhelms the
chemical bonding
forces in rocks.
• most asteroids are
small enough (< 10 km
in diameter) that they can
retain irregular spherical
shapes -- their self-gravity
is not strong enough to
force them into spheres.
 ORBITS OF ASTEROIDS
Most asteroids have slightly
elliptical orbits lying about
2.2-3.3 times the distance of
the earth from the sun (this
distance is called an
astronomical unit, or AU).
These are called Main Belt
asteroids.
• However, a few
asteroids have very
eccentric orbits that
cross the earth's orbit --
called "Apollos" or
“Earth-crossing
asteroids”.
 Occupy the zone between the
orbit of Mars and Jupiter

have the orbits that occasionally

cross the path of earth orbit.

orbit just ahead of, and just behind, the

orbit of Jupiter.
 Other Asteroid Locations
• The majority of asteroids are
in the asteroid belt.
• There are, however, a few
other regions of concentrated
asteroids.
– Trojans
– Hildas
– Apollo asteroids
– Near-Earth asteroids
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/InnerSolarSystem-en.png
The Hildas exist in a
3:2 orbital resonance
ASTEROIDS
with Jupiter, which
means they orbit three
times for every two
orbits of Jupiter and
keeps them in their
own gravitational lock.

Hildas
 Apollo Asteroids
• The Apollo asteroids are the
scary ones.
–They’re the ones that pass
across Earth’s orbit.
oStill, they hit the Earth
once every 10,000 years
on average.
• They may be dead comets. http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmo
s/a/apollo+asteroids
 NEAR-EARTH
ASTEROIDS
• The Apollo asteroids are just the largest of a
few groups of NEAs and one of two groups of
Earth-crossing asteroids.
• There are also the Atens and the Amors,
along with IEOs (Inner Earth Objects) that
don’t cross Earth’s orbit.
Near-Earth Asteroids

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/groups.html
 Origin of the Asteroids
Are they the remains of a smashed planet?

 not likely, their total size would correspond

to a planet only 1500km in diameter,
smaller than even Pluto; the total mass of
the asteroids is less than 1/1000 the mass
of the earth!
More likely is that they are remnants of
material that never formed a planet.
 The strong gravitational force of Jupiter
would prevent matter from accreting
and forming a planet by continually
upsetting the orbits of objects in the
asteroid zone, causing a high rate of
collisions.
 Asteroid Types
• The three main types of asteroids:
C-type asteroids (chondrite) are made of carbon-based stuff
(clay and silicates).
They’re dark colored.
S-type asteroids (stony) are made of silicates and nickel-
iron.
M-type asteroids (metallic) are made of nickel and iron.
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/MPNames.html
 Asteroid Types

http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/asteroid-and-meteorite-types.jpg
 A meteoroid is a piece of
rocky space debris orbiting
the Sun at typically 20 - 40
meteoroid km/s, some of which are
on a collision course with
the Earth.
 A meteor is the fireball seen in the sky
when a meteoroid collides with the
Earth’s atmosphere.
A meteorite is the
remnant of a
meteoroid
which has
survived the
fireball to impact
on the Earth’s
surface.
So where do meteoroids come from?

 Some are leftover bits of junk from the

formation of the Solar System,
 others are bits of rock that are ejected into
space during collisions between asteroids
and meteorites, and
 others still are grains from evaporated
comets.
 Comet
■We’re all familiar
with the typical
comet structure,
especially in clip-art
form:

■ That’s…kinda accurate.
 A comet is a dusty
chunk of ice, a dirty
snowball, that
moves in a highly
elliptical orbit about
the Sun. When
passing near the
Sun, it partially
vaporizes.
■ As comet’s ices are
vaporized, gases and dust
particles are liberated to
glow as coma around the
nucleus. The nucleus of a
comet is made of dark
carbon compounds.
■ A comet have a hydrogen
envelope visible in
ultraviolet light.
■ Dust tail and ion tail is
form by radiation pressure
and solar wind.
■ Dust tail is produced by
photons interacting with
matter.
■ Ion tail is pushed by
magnetic force over
charged particles.
■Comets
originate
either from
the Kuiper
belt or from
the Oort
cloud in near
interstellar
space.
Asteroid belt Kuiper belt

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2013/10/Kuiperbelt-1.jpg
 KUIPER BELT

• As you can see, the Kuiper

Belt is a flat disc at the edge
of the solar system, filled with
debris:
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2013/10/Kuiperbelt-1.jpg
• lies in the plane of the
ecliptic at distances
between 30 and 50 AU
from the Sun.
• shaped by Neptune’s
gravity in ways similar to
Jupiter’s gravity on the
asteroid belt.
• It is thought to contain
tens of thousands of
comet nuclei.
• Many Kuiper belt
objects being affected by
Neptune and Jupiter’s
gravity, can become
comets, such as many
Jupiter-family comets.
 ■ Also notice that Pluto’s
orbit takes it kinda over
and under the Kuiper
Belt, but certainly out far
enough.
■ Pluto and other objects
out there are known as
Kuiper Belt objects
(KBOs) or trans-
Neptunian objects
(TNOs).
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2013/10/Kuiperbelt-1.jpg
 Oort Cloud

• is a shell of icy
objects orbiting
very far from the
Sun.
 Oort Cloud

• contains billions of comet

nuclei in a spherical
distribution that extends
out to 50,000 AU from
the sun.
• intermediate period and
long period comet are
thought to originate
• Orbits may be very
inclined
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2013/10/Kuiperbelt-1.jpg
The Oort Cloud is much
farther away.
Kuiper Belt = 30-50 AU.
Oort Cloud = 10,000-100,000 AU.
The Kuiper Belt is flat; the
Oort Cloud is like a
spherical shell.
Much like the celestial
sphere.
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2013/10/Kuiperbelt-1.jpg
THANK YOU!!!