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Asteroids, Comets and Meteors
Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards - Fueled by recent blockbuster disaster movies, worries about the possibility of a huge chunk of space rock crashing into Earth are on our minds. Will this occur in the future? If it does, what happens to us? This site helps separate the facts from the hype. Check the very complete Links section for more.
Asteroids: Deadly Impact @ Nationalgeographic.com - Can you solve the mystery in this adventure? Were the craters left by comets, meteors, or something els e? Log in and see what you can discover. Here's your mission: "TOP SECRET -- LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED -- CLASSIFIED DATA. Welcome back, Agent Your Name Here. Sorry to clutter your desk in your absence, but I need you on these mysterious cases. All involve extraterrestrial perpetrators. You know the drill: examine the evidence in the files and on your desk, and then finger the most probable culprits. Close every case correctly and you'll get to download a clip from National Geographic Television's classified videotape of `Asteroids: Deadly Impact.' I know you'll get to the bottom of these cases. Click here to destroy this message. --The Director."
Blast from the Past Home Page - Sixty-five million years ago, it was a very bad day for dinosaurs and a lot of other living things on Earth. That day, a huge asteroid crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, near what is now known as the Yucatan Peninsula. The hypothesis is that the asteroid, which was about 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide, vaporized on impact, but the collision blasted trillions of tons of debris into the atmosphere. All this stuff, plus ash and soot, managed to create a dark day. In fact, there were so many dark days in a row that plants couldn't get sunlight to grow, the plant eaters didn't have anything to nibble on, and lots of them couldn't survive. Read why we know what we think we know here.
Comet Hale-Bopp's Memorable Performance - Zinging its way through the sky at two million miles per hour is Comet Hale-Bopp, and lots of kids saw it in spring of 1997, when it was "nearby." If you weren't one of them, it's not too late! You can see a GIF of it here and read lots of information on this spectacular visitor to our solar system.
Comet Introduction - Comets! They're made up of rock particles and frozen gases (it's cold out there in space). They move around the Sun in highly elliptical orbits, which take them very close to the Sun, then very, very far away. The show starts when they get close enough to the Sun for their frozen gases to start to "boil" away. These boiling gases are part of what forms the bright tail that blazes across the sky. Find out more about comets, and look at pictures of some of our recent visitors, including Comet West, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, Halley's Comet, and others.
Comet Shoemaker-Levy Home Page (JPL) - For centuries, comets have been well known by the astronomers who scan the night skies searching for its mysteries. Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy spotted something on March 24, 1993, which was to become a major event. The comet they identified was found to have an orbit around Jupiter. Only this time, it was on a collision course! The fragmented comet, P/Shoemaker-Levy 9, after intense observation and study, collided with Jupiter between July 16 and July 24, 1994. It took over a week for all the fragments to reach the planet, but it provided a light show for anyone with a strong enough telescope pointed in the right direction. See the results here.
Comets and Meteor Showers - Are any comets currently visible? Find out at this page, which gives you the latest news about sitings around the world. There's a nice selection of links too, one of which explains the difference between a comet and a meteor. Comets are made of ice and dust, and it's important to realize that they are not on fire. As they get close to the Sun, some of the ice melts and the released dust particles form the comet's distinctive tail. Meteors are tiny dust specks that orbit the Sun and come to our attention only when they hit our atmosphere and burn up. Comets can be tracked, meteors can not.
Make Asteroid Potatoes - This activity explains where asteroids come from and gives a recipe to make edible asteroids, complete with realistic-looking craters. If you don't want to eat the result of this experiment, you can always keep your new asteroid as a pet. It won't eat much, we guarantee!
Natural History Museum, London - The Cosmic Football - Scientists often explore the ice of Antarctica for micrometeorites. These tiny space travelers are so small, you need a microscope to see them! They have to be collected and studied under very special conditions so that they are not contaminated. This is the story of one very unusual micrometeorite and the British scientist who unraveled its mystery. See if you can follow the clues and make the correct hypothesis about how it got its distinctive shape.
Spacelink - Comets, Asteroids and Meteoroids - Do you want just an overview of facts about comets and meteors? Check here for basic text coverage, including such information as how many meteors fall to Earth each day (tons!), how many meteors you can expect to see an hour during the Perseid shower every August (68 at the most), and what the heck a tektite is (a glassy rock that may be the remains of a meteor or a comet fragment--scientists are still arguing about it).
Stardust - The Jet Propulsion Lab invited kids to send their name to a comet. STARDUST launched in February 1999 to visit Comet Wild-2 to collect particles and return them to Earth -- for analysis. The names were placed on two microchips, which will be carried back to Earth after the dance through the comet. This won't be until 2006. Until then, maybe you can find your name on the microchips--check it out! You can also find out where STARDUST is now on its three billion mile journey.
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