meteors

Meteors and Meteor shower .


 * Most meteors when entering the atmosphere first burn up the gasses on the outer and inner core but usually break up before they hit the earth. A meteor usually appears when a meteoroid (hard object enters earths atmosphere. Meteors go by many names some of the names are meteor(s), meteoroid(s), shooting star(s), or falling star(s). In one day millions of meteors enter earth’s atmosphere but they mostly burn up. **

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 * Asteroids and the asteroid Belt **
 * Asteroids are large space boulders that drift through the asteroid belt. Some are so large th ****ey have their own moon that rotates around the asteroid. The asteroid belt is not so smooth and it is there are gaps known as Kirkwood gaps. The gaps are also called radii. That is where Jupiter keeps the asteroids from orbiting and coming and crashing into Jupiter. **

Asteroids
 * Asteroids are different bodies of rock that are believed to be left over from the beginning of the solar system 4.6 billion yrs. ago .They are rocky objects with irregular shapes up to several hundred km. across but most are much smaller. **

Meteors


 * Meteors are better known as “shooting stars”: startling streaks of light that suddenly appear in the sky when a dust particle from outer space evaporates high in the Earth’s atmosphere. We call the light phenomenon in the atmosphere a “meteor,” while the dust particle is called a “meteoroid.” **


 * Most visible Leonids are between 1 mm and 1cm in diameter. For example, a Leonid meteor of magnitude +5, which is barely visible with the naked eye in a dark sky, is caused by a meteoroid of 0.5 mm in diameter and weights only 0.00006 grams. **

Tiny particles can cause a light so bright that it can be seen over distances of hundreds of kilometers. The reason is the astronomical speed of the meteoroids. Just before they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, Leonid meteoroids travel at 71 kilometers per second, or some 2,663 times as fast as a baseball pitch ,or, if you want. around the Earth in 3.8 minutes!!! **

**Source **
 * When meteoroids enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they collide with numerous air molecules. Those collisions sputter away the outer layers of the particle, creating a vapor of sodium, iron and magnesium atoms. In subsequent collisions, electrons are knocked into orbits at larger mean distances from the nucleus of the atoms. When the electrons fall back to their rest positions, light is emitted. This is the same process as in gas discharge lamps. **