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A meteor is a small, solid object that burns up upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The bright streak it makes is commonly called a shooting star. If it makes it to the ground it’s called a meteorite. I don’t think that definition includes objects lost from the Space Station, like a wrench or tool bag.
Some meteors are the remnants of the early formation of the Solar System, bits and pieces that didn’t get incorporated into planets or moons. Since they burn up in our atmosphere or land on the ground you could say they are now being incorporated.
Comets, which are kind of like big dirty snowballs, since they are made up of ice and some dust, are the source of a few meteors. Comets orbit the sun out beyond the orbit of Pluto, which used to be our most distant planet, but is now called a planetoid---a really long story. Sometimes the gravity of big planets like Jupiter will disturb a comet’s orbit and it will pass close enough to the sun to warm up and shed a trail of debris. When the orbit of the Earth passes through this trail we get a meteor shower.
Most meteors come from the asteroid belt, that bunch of stuff making a ring of debris around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some are of interstellar origin, from outside our solar system, or even pieces of our moon and Mars, dislodged by an asteroid impact.
Most meteors are made of stony material. A few per cent are mostly iron and nickel. The majority of meteors range in size from specks of dust to sand-grains. Luckily only a rare few are much larger, such as the six miles in diameter meteor that gouged out the huge crater in Arizona. That left a mark, a crater three-quarters of a mile in diameter and six hundred feet deep.
Some meteors are the remnants of the early formation of the Solar System, bits and pieces that didn’t get incorporated into planets or moons. Since they burn up in our atmosphere or land on the ground you could say they are now being incorporated.
Comets, which are kind of like big dirty snowballs, since they are made up of ice and some dust, are the source of a few meteors. Comets orbit the sun out beyond the orbit of Pluto, which used to be our most distant planet, but is now called a planetoid---a really long story. Sometimes the gravity of big planets like Jupiter will disturb a comet’s orbit and it will pass close enough to the sun to warm up and shed a trail of debris. When the orbit of the Earth passes through this trail we get a meteor shower.
Most meteors come from the asteroid belt, that bunch of stuff making a ring of debris around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some are of interstellar origin, from outside our solar system, or even pieces of our moon and Mars, dislodged by an asteroid impact.
Most meteors are made of stony material. A few per cent are mostly iron and nickel. The majority of meteors range in size from specks of dust to sand-grains. Luckily only a rare few are much larger, such as the six miles in diameter meteor that gouged out the huge crater in Arizona. That left a mark, a crater three-quarters of a mile in diameter and six hundred feet deep.
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