Space Rocks

Impacts of our smallest neighbors

1
 Asteroids
small celestial of bodies which are
usually rocky and/or metallic
The majority of known asteroids
are found between the orbits of
Mars and Jupiter
Planetary building blocks
2
 Asteroid
Asteroid
Belt
Belt

3
 Asteroids
Asteroids that are big enough to
land spaceship is called planetoids
Rich in iron, nickel and other
metals

4
 Primitive Solar System

The four inner planets formed,

but Jupiter’s huge gravity caused
chaos in the region past Mars.
No big planet ever formed there 5
 Asteroids
 Trojans
Asteroids that share an orbit with a
large planet or moon
Ex: Jupiter Trojans
They share same orbit as the planet Jupiter

6
 Craters in the Inner
Solar System

Mercury Mars’s Southern Highlands

7
 Impacts
on Moons

Mars’s tiny moon Phobos

Mimas, a moon of Saturn

8
Lunar Cratering
Our Moon
shows a
history of
impacts

Most of these
occurred long
ago…
9
10
 The Asteroid Belt is Sparse

On average, there are

more than 1 million km
between asteroids
11
Dynamic
Collisions
Do
Occur

And the effects

are seen
throughout the
Solar System
12
Jupiter Shows Recent Impacts
The world watched as a
comet collided with
Jupiter in 1994
Possibly not as rare as we
thought. Other collisions
have occurred since, like
this one in 2009

13
 Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs)
7075 NEAs already found
500 to 1000 of them at least 1 km in
diameter
Cretaceous – Palepgene (66 million
years ago)
Extinction of dinosaurs.

14
 More than 170
Impact Craters on Earth

15
 Earth Erases
History of Impacts
Barringer Crater, Arizona

Roter Kamm, Namibia

16
Wolf Creek, Australia
Chicxulub and the Dinosaurs

17
 Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs)
Tunguska Event of 1908
Massive explosion that caused the
destruction of an estimated 80 million
trees in an area of more than 2000 sq. m
Explosive force is estimated to have
been 1000 times than that of the atomic
bomb dropped in Horishima

18
 Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs)
Tunguska Event of 1908
Estimated was about 38 m in diameter

19
 Recent Earth Impacts
2008 TC3- first celestial object
tracked by astronomers before
entering Earth’s atmosphere

Tunguska in Russia 1909

20
 Naming Asteroids
First asteroid was discovered in 1801(910
km across) named Ceres - a roman goddess
of agriculture; Pallas, Juno and Vesta

21
 Naming Asteroids
At first, Latin names were given to
asteroids
Example: 8 Flora, 17 Tbetis

22
 8 Asteroids named after Filipinos
(IAU)
6282 Edwelda – Edwin Aguirre and
Imelda Joson (1985)
11697 Estrella – Allan Noriel Estrella
2088 Macalintal – Jeric Valles Macalintal
12522 Rara – Prem Vilas Fortan M. Rara

23
 8 Asteroids named after Filipinos
(IAU)
13241 Biyo – Dr. Josette T. Biyo
4866 Badillo – Victor L. Badillo
6636 Kintanar – Dr. Roman Lucero
Kintanar
28439 Miguelreyes – Miguel Arnold
Reyes
24
 Seatwork A
Express your aspirations and future career
plans and how you can make your mark,
however small, in other people’s lives?

25
Comets: Occasional Visitors
26
 COMETS
Basically dusty snowballs which orbit
the sun
Contain CO2, NH3, CH4 and other
compounds
They reflect light from the sun when
they get closer to it.

27
 COMETS
Periodic Comets
They have very eccentric orbits that may
bring them close to the sun at one point
Non-periodic
More than 200 years or even thousand or
million of years
Very rare appearances
28
 COMETS
Superstitious beliefs:
A sign of bad luck
Happily welcomed as messengers of
the gods
End of the world
Calamity and war

29
 SEATWORK B

Read the article Sci Bit page 167

Are there scientific pieces of evidence
that support this superstition?

30
 FAMOUS COMETS
 HALLEY’S COMMETS
Appears only once every 75 to 76
years
It was seen again in 1758, 1835, 1910
and 1986
Predicted to be appear again in 2061
Periodic comet
31
 FAMOUS COMETS
 HALLEY’S COMMET
Sir Edmond Halley
Using Mathematical calculations
Observed in 1682

32
Inside the Comets

33
 Inside the Comets
 Coma –extremely unstable atmosphere around
the comet formed by the released dust and gas.

34
 Inside the Comets
 The force exerted on the come by the sun’s radiation pressure
and solar wind results to the formation of the tail that points
away from the sun

35
 Inside the Comets
 Coma makes the comet appear much larger
especially together with the tail as the dust
reflect light from the sun, and gases glowing as
they ionize.
 Its diameter ranges up to 1.5 million km.

36
Inside the Comets

37
 COMETS COLLIDING WITH
THE PLANETS
 Collision were more common
July 1944 – comet shoemaker – levy 9 broke up
into pieces and collide with the Jupiter
Created a giant brown spot that was almost the size
of earth (12 000km)

38
 NAMING OF COMETS
 Visible in the Philippines
 Halley’s comet (1910 & 1986)
Comet Ikeya Seki (1965)
Comet Kohoutek (1976)
 Comet West (1976)
Comet Hale – Bopp (1997)
 Comets McNaught and Holmes (2008)
Comet Hartley-2 (2010)
39
 Love of Lab
 Read about asteroids, meteoroids, and comets.
Organize the information into a reference chart that
will guide others in comparing and differentiating
three spaces bodies.

40
 MINI - QUIZ
Make a Venn diagram to compare and contrast an
asteroids and a comet. Work in Pairs

41
Meteoroids: Space Rocks

42
Meteoroids: Space Rocks

43
 METEOROIDS
 Fragments of rocky material with similar
composition as a terrestrial planets
 Very tiny meteoroid are known as
micrometeoroids – referred cosmic dust
 Do not emit any light of their own, but
merely reflect the light of the sun just like
the moon

44
 METEOROIDS

No visible path or tail

Visible tail or path of the

meteoroid as it enters
Earth’s atmosphere

Hits Earth and survives

the impact
45
 Meteorites
Chunks of asteroids sometimes make it through
the atmosphere to the ground
These are time capsules telling us about how
matter came together in the early Solar System

46
 NASA’s
WISE Mission

Using Infrared
technology to see
dark asteroids
 WISE finds asteroids - including
some seen for the first time
 100,000s of Main Belt Asteroids
 100s of Near-Earth Objects
(NEOs)

47