| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Comet | Loose collection of ice, dust, and small rocky particles whose orbits are usually very long ellipses. 'Dirty Snowball' |
| Parts of a comet: Coma | loud of gas and dust forms a fuzzy outer layer |
| Parts of a comet: Nucleus | Solid inner core of a comet |
| Parts of a comet: Tail | Can be more than 1 million kilometers long and can stretch across most of the sky. As comet approaches the sun and heats up, some of its gas and dust stream outward, forming a tail. 2 tails- gas tail and dust tail |
| Kuiper Belt | doughnut-shaped region that extends from beyond Neptune's orbit to about 100 times Earth's distance from the sun. |
| Oort Cloud | Spherical region of comets that surrounds the solar system out to more than 2000 times the distance between Pluto and the sun |
| Asteroids | Rocky objects too small and to numerous to be considered planets |
| Asteroid Belt | Region between Mars and Jupiter |
| Meteoroid | a chunk of rock or dust in space. Come from comets or asteroids |
| Meteor | When a meteoroid enters Earth's atmosphere, friction with the air creates heat and produces a s streak of light in the sky |
| Meteorite | Meteoroids that pass through the atmosphere and hit Earth's surface |
Combine with other sets
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