ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 33: Sudbury Basin, Meteor Crater, Pingualuit Crater

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy
• Course: ASTR 101
• Professor: David Alan Hanes

Document Summary

Meteors can be seen as individuals or in groups (showers) Meteoroid = the pebble out in space. Meteor = the luminous event we see (the trail of the falling star ) Meteorite = any surviving lump that we find on the ground. Most meteors are small (tiny pebbles, or even grains, of rocky material) They enter earth"s atmosphere at very high speed (many tens of km/sec) Air resistance slows them and heats both the pebble and the column of air this is what we see, not the pebble itself. Meteor: the light emitted from a meteoroid as it enters the atmosphere. Fireball: a meteor brighter than the planet venus. Bolide: a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere. Fell around 10,000 years ago onto greenland. Was used by native people as a source of iron. For example, once landed on a person"s car and once on the roof of a house. Antarctica is a good place to look for meteorites.