Download or read book Seven Wonders of Asteroids Comets and Meteors written by Ron Miller and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From earliest times, humans have wondered about the sky above them and have studied all visible objects. People began to identify differences between stars and planets, and as technology advanced with telescopes and space probes, they sought deeper understanding of the millions of bits of debris rocketing through the solar system. Scientists determined that most of these objects are left over from the creation of the planets and their moons. They classified these leftovers into categories such as asteroids, comets, and meteors. In this book, we'll explore seven wonders of asteroids, comets, and meteors. Ceres is a huge mountain-sized asteroid that orbits with other asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. Other marvels include Ganymede, the largest asteroid in the group called Earthgrazers or Near-Earth Objects, and Halley's comet, a ball of ice, that passes Earth every seventy-five or so years. We'll also explore the amazing impact that space debris can have on planets and moons. The Borealis Basin, a wondrous crater more than 5,000 miles across, formed when an asteroid collided with Mars in the ancient past. Then we will travel to the far-off Kuiper belt, where as many as 200 million icy bodies orbit, and wonder at the mystery of planetlike objects, such as Pluto and Charon. Finally, we’ll can experience a space wonder firsthand by standing outside on a night in August to watch the spectacular Perseid meteor shower fill the sky.
Download or read book Debris of the Solar System Comets and Asteroids written by The Open The Open Courses Library and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debris of the Solar System Comets and Asteroids Hundreds of smaller members of the solar system--asteroids and comets--are known to have crossed Earth's orbit in the past, and many others will do so in centuries ahead. What could we do if we knew a few years in advance that one of these bodies would hit Earth?. Asteroids are rocky or metallic and contain little volatile (easily evaporated) material. Comets are small icy objects that contain frozen water and other volatile materials but with solid grains mixed in. In the deep freeze beyond Neptune, we also have a large reservoir of material unchanged since the formation of the solar system, as well as a number of dwarf planets. Chapter Outline: Thinking Ahead Asteroids Asteroids and Planetary Defense The "Long-Haired" Comets The Origin and Fateof Comets and Related Objects The Open Courses Library introduces you to the best Open Source Courses.
Download or read book Space Garbage written by Arthur Jack Meadows and published by Philip's. This book was released on 1985 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sun and Solar System Debris written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Small Bodies in the Solar System written by Jean-Claude Worms and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Asteroids Comets and Meteors written by Giles Sparrow and published by Heinemann Educational Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Color photos and diagrams fill this overview of asteroids, comets, and meteors--the "debris of the solar system"--Which explains how they are formed and describes famous examples, missions to asteroids and comets, and impacts with Earth. Also includes a glossary and further-reading list.
Download or read book Destination Asteroids Comets and Meteors written by Giles Sparrow and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2009-08-15 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the debris that can be found in the solar system, including how they are formed, what they are made of, and how they were discovered.
Download or read book Comets Asteroids and Meteors written by Dennis B. Fradin and published by Children's Press(CT). This book was released on 1984 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes in simple terms the meteors, comets, and asteroids that are part of our solar system and discusses the various theories concerning their origin and their effect on life on Earth.
Download or read book The Geology of the Terrestrial Planets written by Michael H. Carr and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Asteroids and Comets written by William B. Rice and published by Teacher Created Materials. This book was released on 2010-08-20 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sky is filled with much to see. We see the sun during the day and the moon and stars at night. But you can see other interesting things as well-like bright lights with tails and objects that shoot straight through the stars! These things are asteroids and comets. Learn all about them in this book.
Download or read book Catching Stardust written by Natalie Starkey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A promising debut.' New Scientist Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious – comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its planets. Locked within each of these extra-terrestrial objects is the 4.6-billion-year wisdom of Solar System events, and by studying them at close quarters using spacecraft we can coerce them into revealing their closely-guarded secrets. This offers us the chance to answer some fundamental questions about our planet and its inhabitants. Exploring comets and asteroids also allows us to shape the story of Earth's future, enabling us to protect our precious planet from the threat of a catastrophic impact from space, and maybe to even recover valuable raw materials from them. This cosmic bounty could be as useful in space as it is on Earth, providing the necessary fuel and supplies for humans as they voyage into deep space to explore more distant locations within the Solar System. Catching Stardust tells the story of these enigmatic celestial objects, revealing how scientists are using them to help understand a crucial time in our history – the birth of the Solar System, and everything contained within it.
Download or read book Evaluating the Biological Potential in Samples Returned from Planetary Satellites and Small Solar System Bodies written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1998-10-14 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time since the Apollo program, NASA and space agencies abroad have plans to bring samples to Earth from elsewhere in the solar system. There are missions in various stages of definition to gather material over the next decade from Mars, an asteroid, comets, the satellites of Jupiter, and the interplanetary dust. Some of these targets, most especially Jupiter's satellites Europa and Ganymede, now appear to have the potential for harboring living organisms. This book considers the possibility that life may have originated or existed on a body from which a sample might be taken and the possibility that life still exists on the body either in active form or in a form that could be reactivated. It also addresses the potential hazard to terrestrial ecosystems from extraterrestrial life if it exists in a returned sample. Released at the time of the Internationl Committee on Space Research General Assembly, the book has already established the basis for plans for small body sample retruns in the international space research community.
Download or read book Comets Meteors and Asteroids written by Seymour Simon and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1998-05-27 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether they appear as distant specks in an astronomer's telescope or shoot brilliantly across the evening sky, comets, meteors, and asteroids have fascinated sky gazers throughout history. But where do these racing celestial bodies come from, and what can they teach us about our universe? Join Seymour Simon for a look at the fiery mystery and wild wonder of these luminous bodies of night.
Download or read book Cosmic Debris written by Jonathan Powell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-17 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the mysterious and the well-studied debris in Earth’s crowded neighborhood. From orbiting comets to the workings of the Asteroid Belt, and from meteor showers to our home-grown network of orbiting satellites, the full diversity of space objects and the debris they create is explored. Powell also discusses some of the current research techniques used to find potentially harmful rogue elements, with an emphasis on keeping watch for any objects that may intersect Earth’s orbit. Such bodies also impact other worlds, and much has been learned from observing these encounters. The information in this book is intended to foster thought about the universe in which we live, but without overloading its readers with numbers and lecture-room analysis. Like a good thriller, it allows its readers to pace themselves with the story and, by the end, encourages them to draw their own conclusions.
Download or read book The Lonely Existence of Asteroids and Comets written by Mark Andrew Weakland and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a dark night as you watch the sky with your friends, a rock with a fiery tail shoots across the sky. A comet! Asteroids and comets hurtle through space, sometimes a little too close to Earth. But did you know that they are linked to life on this planet? From the asteroid Ceres to HalleyÕs comet, blast into space and enter the lonely existence of asteroids and comets.
Download or read book Impact Earth written by Austen Atkinson and published by Virgin Books Limited. This book was released on 1999 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As more asteroids enter our solar system, our chances of a collision increase by the day. This work examines the impact phenomenon describing the importance of Deathrock collisions in the Earth's history, the potential dangers and alleged cover-ups of near misses.
Download or read book Impact written by Gerrit L. Verschuur and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-12-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most scientists now agree that some sixty-five million years ago, an immense comet slammed into the Yucatan, detonating a blast twenty million times more powerful than the largest hydrogen bomb, punching a hole ten miles deep in the earth. Trillions of tons of rock were vaporized and launched into the atmosphere. For a thousand miles in all directions, vegetation burst into flames. There were tremendous blast waves, searing winds, showers of molten matter from the sky, earthquakes, and a terrible darkness that cut out sunlight for a year, enveloping the planet in freezing cold. Thousands of species of plants and animals were obliterated, including the dinosaurs, some of which may have become extinct in a matter of hours. In Impact, Gerrit L. Verschuur offers an eye-opening look at such catastrophic collisions with our planet. Perhaps more important, he paints an unsettling portrait of the possibility of new collisions with earth, exploring potential threats to our planet and describing what scientists are doing right now to prepare for this awful possibility. Every day something from space hits our planet, Verschuur reveals. In fact, about 10,000 tons of space debris fall to earth every year, mostly in meteoric form. The author recounts spectacular recent sightings, such as over Allende, Mexico, in 1969, when a fireball showered the region with four tons of fragments, and the twenty-six pound meteor that went through the trunk of a red Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York, in 1992 (the meteor was subsequently sold for $69,000 and the car itself fetched $10,000). But meteors are not the greatest threat to life on earth, the author points out. The major threats are asteroids and comets. The reader discovers that astronomers have located some 350 NEAs ("Near Earth Asteroids"), objects whose orbits cross the orbit of the earth, the largest of which are 1627 Ivar (6 kilometers wide) and 1580 Betula (8 kilometers). Indeed, we learn that in 1989, a bus-sized asteroid called Asclepius missed our planet by 650,000 kilometers (a mere six hours), and that in 1994 a sixty-foot object passed within 180,000 kilometers, half the distance to the moon. Comets, of course, are even more deadly. Verschuur provides a gripping description of the small comet that exploded in the atmosphere above the Tunguska River valley in Siberia, in 1908, in a blinding flash visible for several thousand miles (every tree within sixty miles of ground zero was flattened). He discusses Comet Swift-Tuttle--"the most dangerous object in the solar system"--a comet far larger than the one that killed off the dinosaurs, due to pass through earth's orbit in the year 2126. And he recounts the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994, as some twenty cometary fragments struck the giant planet over the course of several days, casting titanic plumes out into space (when Fragment G hit, it outshone the planet on the infrared band, and left a dark area at the impact site larger than the Great Red Spot). In addition, the author describes the efforts of Spacewatch and other groups to locate NEAs, and evaluates the idea that comet and asteroid impacts have been an underrated factor in the evolution of life on earth. Astronomer Herbert Howe observed in 1897: "While there are not definite data to reason from, it is believed that an encounter with the nucleus of one of the largest comets is not to be desired." As Verschuur shows in Impact, we now have substantial data with which to support Howe's tongue-in-cheek remark. Whether discussing monumental tsunamis or the innumerable comets in the Solar System, this book will enthrall anyone curious about outer space, remarkable natural phenomenon, or the future of the planet earth.
