Astronomy 1021 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Impact Crater, Planetary System, Oort Cloud
3 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Astronomy chapter 9: asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets. Asteroids are virtually undetectable to the naked eye. The largest asteroids is ceres, it qualiies as a dwarf planet because its large enough that its own gravity has made it round. Many are odd shapes because they are fragments of larger asteroids. The total mass of all asteroids is much less than the mass of any terrestrial planet. Why didn"t a planet form from the asteroid belt: jupiter"s gravity, through the inluence of orbital resonances, prevented asteroids from accreing into a planet and sill shapes their orbit today. A meteor is only the lash of light caused by a paricle entering our atmosphere at high speed, not the paricle itself. Primiive in the sense that of being remnants from the birth of our solar system. Diferences in composiion relect where they condensed: those containing carbon compounds condensed farther out i the asteroid belt.
