Whats the difference

[Raggie]

between an asteroid, a comet and a meteor?

[heathfield]

Why not enter the words in Google in turn, - you'll get full and detailed explanations of what each one is.

[Raggie]

oh sorry Heathfield, I thought this was a question and answer site *rollseyes*

[Loosehead]

Asteroids, orbit mostly between Mars and Jupiter in the Asteroid belt. They have regular orbits generally, the largest ones are often called planetoids, Ceres for example which I belive is about 60miles long.

Comet's have irregular orbits, are generally made of dust and Ice, orgintate from the Oort cloud, eg Haleys comment takes about 72 years to orbit the sun. They usually have a very eccentric orbit passing close to the sun at one end of the elipse and disappearing for, in some cases, thousands of years before being sreen again.

Meteors are usually what you would call shooting stars that burn up into the atmosphere. They are usually very small. They are debris that is encountered by Earth as we orbit. If one hits the groud it is known as a meteorite. Stand by for a load of pendantic rambling about the tunguska incident.

As always there are exceptions, I have described the general situation.

[Raggie]

Thank you very much Loosehead :-)

I saw something about the Tunguska thing yesterday when watching a video about the asteriods that are passing Earth and Mars. This is what prompted my question. I thought they may be named different things according to how large (or small) they are.

[Loosehead]

The asteroids that pass close to earth are usually from the Asteroid belt, they would be made of iron and rock mostly. They pass this way because they have been knocked out of their normal orbit by some sort of collision, that being the case they can then adopt Comet style eccentric orbits but their composition is entirely different. There are various events in the history of earth that point to Asteroid colisions, the extinction of the dinosoaurs for example.

[heathfield]

Point taken, Raggie. On the other hand, this site has somewhat limited space for replies, so to obtain fully detailed answers to your question I would still recommend a search on Google.

[Raggie]

Thanks for the extra info Loosehead :-)


Heathfield I owe you an apology for snapping at you earlier. I don't come on here very often and the few times I have some sections have been like a battleground for lunatics. I thought you were being sarky towards me for some reason, so sorry about that. I have looked at a couple of links on google but they went way over my head, Im not the brightest button in the box :-s I was just after a simple explanation like Loosehead gave me. Its a pity about the limited space, I didnt know about that when asking.