Question

5. Define the terms comet, asteroid, and meteoroid.

Answer 1

Comets are loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles whose orbits are usually very long and narrow

Answer 2

Answer:

Comet:

It is a celestial body constituted by ice, dust and rocks that orbit around the Sun, after having been altered by the Oort cloud; following different trajectories that can be highly eccentric elliptical (periodic trajectories), parabolic or hyperbolic.

One of the main characteristics of a comet is that it travels quite fast, on its way around the Sun and has a long tail, which always go in the opposite direction to the Sun (due to the radiation pressure of sunlight).

Asteroid:

It is a small rocky body (smaller than a planet and larger than a meteoroid). Most of these bodies are orbiting between Mars and Jupiter in the region known as the asteroid belt; while others accumulate at Jupiter's Lagrange points, and others cross the orbits of the planets.

Meteoroid:

It is a fragment of the celestial body that moves through space, which is smaller in size to an asteroid. If it gets to enter the atmosphere of the Earth, it will start to burn by friction with it (combustion) and it will be called a meteor, while if it hits the surface, it will be called a meteorite.