Asteroid and Comets

ANJANI SINDHUSHA (SC08B135) DEVESH KUMAR MAURYA (SC08B120) JAGTAP ANUJ VISHWAS (SC08B121) MOHAMMAD BASHEER (SC08B141) RAKESH KUMAR MEENA (SC08B126)

ASTEROIDS
Asteroids are a class of Small Solar System Bodies in orbit around the Sun.

There are millions of asteroids, bodies within the young Suns solar nebula that never grew large enough to become planets.

A large majority of known asteroids orbit in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter or co-orbital with Jupiter.

TROJANS
Trojan is a minor planet or natural satellite that shares an orbit with a larger planet. But does not collide with it. Because it orbits around one of the two lagrangian points of stability, which lie approximately 60 ahead of and behind the larger body.

TROJANS AND GREEKS

Trojan points are the points labeled L4 and L5, highlighted in red, on the orbital path of the secondary object (blue), around the primary object (yellow).

 Two different theories are present there to explain the formation of asteroids.

Formation of Asteroids

Theory 1
In 1802, shortly after discovering Pallas suggestion came that Ceres and Pallas were fragments of a much larger planet that once occupied the Mars-Jupiter region. This planet must have suffered an internal explosion or a cometary impact many million years before.

Olbers

Herschel

Limitations
Large amount of energy would be required to destroy a planet. The belt has very low combined mass (which is only about 4% of the mass of the our Moon). The significant chemical differences between the asteroids are difficult to explain if they come from the same planet.

Theory 2
In the Solar System, planetary formation occurred via the Solar nebula process. During the first few million years of the Solar System's history, an accretion process of sticky collisions caused the clumping of small particles, which gradually increased in size. Clump could draw in other bodies through gravitational attraction and become planetesimals. This gravitational accretion led to the formation of the rocky planets and the gas giants.

Theory 2 cntd
Planetesimals within the region were too strongly perturbed by Jupiter's gravity to form a planet. Instead they continued to orbit the Sun as before, while occasionally colliding. In regions where the average velocity of the collisions was too high, the shattering of planetesimals tended to dominate over accretion, preventing the formation of planet-sized bodies. The region lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter contains many orbital resonances.

Theory 2 cntd
As Jupiter migrated inward following its formation, these resonances would have swept across the asteroid belt, dynamically exciting the region's population and increasing their velocities relative to each other. Explosive volcanism and formed magma oceans was there on few bodies.

Evolution
Asteroids have undergone considerable evolution since their formation, including internal heating, surface melting from impacts, space weathering from radiation, and bombardment by micrometeorites. The current asteroid belt is believed to contain only a small fraction of the mass of the primordial belt. There has been no significant increase or decrease in the typical dimensions of the main-belt asteroids. The original asteroid belt may have contained mass equivalent to the Earth.

Classification
Asteroids are assigned a type based on spectral shape, color, and sometimes albedo. Give information about the surface composition. For small bodies that are not internally differentiated, the surface and internal compositions are presumably similar. While large bodies such as 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta are known to have internal structure.

Differentiation

Classification
Two main classification schemes to be discussed are: 1. Tholen classification 2. SMASS Classification

Tholen classification
This classification was developed from broad band spectra (between 0.31m and 1.06m) obtained during the Eight-Color Asteroid Survey (ECAS) in the 1980s and albedo measurements. There are three broad categories (C group, S group and X group) and several smaller types.

C-group
C-group contains following type - B-type - C-type - F-type - G-type C-type asteroids are carbonaceous asteroids. 75% of known asteroids falls in this category. C-types are much darker than most other asteroid types except D-type (albedo: 0.03-0.1)
253 Mathilde

C-group cntd
This type of asteroid has very similar spectra to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, whose chemical composition is approximately the same as the Sun. Except that they do not contain hydrogen, helium and other volatiles. Hydrated (water-containing) minerals are present. Their spectra contain moderately strong ultraviolet absorption at wavelengths below about 0.4 m to 0.5 m. While at longer wavelengths they are slightly reddish.

S-type asteroids
Are of a stony composition, hence the name. Approximately 17% of asteroids are of this type, making it the second most common after the C-type. S-types are moderately bright (albedo: 0.10-0.22) Consist mainly of iron- and magnesium-silicates. Their spectrum has a moderately steep slope at wavelengths shorter than 0.7 m. The 1 m absorption is indicative of the presence of silicates (stony minerals).
Eros

X-group
Since in this scheme the albedo is crucial in discriminating between the above types, some objects for which albedo information was not available were assigned an X-type The X-group contains the types-E-type -M-type Steins -P-type Example:50 Virginia. The small classes -A-type(446 Aeternitas) -D-type (624 Hektor) -T-type (96 Aegle) -Q-type (1862 Apollo) -R-type (349 Dembowska) -V-type (4 Vesta)

SMASS Classification
This is a more recent classification introduced based on the Small Main-Belt Asteroid Spectroscopic Survey (SMASS) of 1447 asteroids. This survey produced spectra of a far higher resolution. Albedos were not considered Asteroids were sorted into the 24 types, The majority of bodies fall again into the three broad C, S, and X categories. A smaller range of wavelengths (0.44m to 0.92m) was observed.

SMASS cntd
In the SMASS classification, the wider C-group contains B-type corresponding to the Tholen B and F-types a core C-type for asteroids having the most "typical" spectra in the group Cg and Cgh types corresponding to the Tholen G-type Ch type with an absorption feature around 0.7m Cb type corresponding to transition objects between the SMASS C and B types.

S-group
Contains the following types: -A-type -K-type -L-type -Q-type -R-type core S-type for asteroids having the most "typical" spectra for the S-group Sa, Sk, Sl, Sq, and Sr-types containing transition objects between the core S-type and the A, K, L, Q, and R-types, respectively.

X-group
contains the types: -X-type -Xe-type -Xc- and Xk-type.

Some other type are given -T-type -D-type -Ld-type: a new type with more extreme spectral features than the L-type -O-type a small category (3628 Boznemcov) -V-type

KIRKWOOD GAP
A Kirkwood gap is a gap or dip in the distribution of main-belt asteroids with semi-major axis (or equivalently their orbital period). For example, there are very few asteroids with semimajor axis near 2.50 AU, period 3.95 years. The most prominent Kirkwood gaps (see diagram) are located at mean orbital radii of: 2.06 AU (4:1 resonance) 2.5 AU (3:1 resonance), home to the Alinda family of asteroids 2.82 AU (5:2 resonance) 2.95 AU (7:3 resonance) 3.27 AU (2:1 resonance), home to the Griqua family of asteroids

KIRKWOOD GAPS

Kirkwood Gaps cntd

Weaker and/or narrower gaps are also found at: 1.9 AU (9:2 resonance) 2.25 AU (7:2 resonance) 2.33 AU (10:3 resonance) 2.71 AU (8:3 resonance) 3.03 AU (9:4 resonance) 3.075 AU (11:5 resonance) 3.47 AU (11:6 resonance) 3.7 AU (5:3 resonance)

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/images/ast_histo.ps

RESERVE SLIDES

INTERNAL STRUCTURE

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2005/27/text/

Courtesy: Tony Dunn from the Gravity Simulator message board.

The animation illustrates Pallas' near-18:7 resonance pattern with Jupiter. The motion of Pallas is shown in a reference frame that rotates about the Sun (i.e., the center dot) with a period equal to Jupiter's orbital period. Accordingly, Jupiter's orbit appears almost stationary as the pink ellipse at top left. Mars' motion is orange, and the EarthMoon system is blue and white. The orbit of Pallas is green when above the ecliptic, and red when below.

Comets

Introduction
The history of comet watching dates back to

1000 BC from the Chinese records and Chaldea, a place in present Iraq. Comets have been regarded as omen, even as recently as 1986. Today Astronomer study Comets from scientific perspectives, and our understanding of these fascinating objects have grown tremendously.

CometsDirty Balls of Ice

They look like a star with a ghostly white tail. The term "comet" derives from the Greek aster kometes, which means "longhaired star"---a reference to the tail.

Comets: Dirty Balls of Ice

They can be seen by us only when they pass by the sun and the suns heat melts them. The comet's tail is made of material from the comet; gas from the ices and dust that is mixed in with the ice. They escape as the comet melts. The tail always points away from the sun due to the solar winds (movement of heat away from sun)

Comets: Dirty Balls of Ice

They travel around the sun in long looping orbits that bring them near the sun on one end and around Jupiter on the other end. Example:
If a comet has a large orbit, it takes a long time to go around the Sun. Some comets are "short-period" comets that take five or ten years to complete an orbit. Some comets are "long-period" comets that take decades, centuries, or millennia to orbit the Sun.

Comets: Dirty Balls of Ice

The icy, hard part of the comet is called the nucleus. As the comet melts, sometimes large chunks of ice break off in a hurry and large amounts of gases escape at once and cause a bright outburst.

The gas and dust are released and form an atmosphere around the comet called the coma.

Components of Comets:

Orbits of Comets
Elliptical in Shape
Randomly oriented
Comet

Aphelion distance

Sun

Earth

Perihelion distance

Nomenclature of comets
Comet are named by International Astronomical Union

(IAU) after the person who first discovers them. Many comets are discovered by amateur astronomers. Charles Messier, E. E. Bernard, Shoemaker and Levy, Hale and Bopp, Ikeya, Seki and Hayakutake are popular comet hunters.

Origins of Comets

Comets are thought to be the left over debris from during the time of formation of the solar system. The elliptical orbits of comets suggest that they underwent gravitational pull from the giant planets. This all lead us to infer two possible locations where comets could start their journey towards the sun.

Possible Homes for Comets

Kuiper Belt
Oort Cloud

Courtesy - Deep Impact - NASA - JPL

Kuiper Belt
Discovered by Gerard Kuiper in 1951 The belt is 30 to 50 AU from the Sun The plane of the belt is close to the ecliptic Probably contains more than 100,000 objects Some of these objects are 100 km or larger in diameter

Kuiper belt

Oort Cloud
Hypothesized by a Dutch Astronomer Jan Oort in 1950. Shape is spherical distribution around the Sun. 50,000 AU from the Sun. May contain 5 trillion objects. Probably created 4.6 billion years ago.

Formation
Astronomers are not certain how comets formed, but most believe that comets formed at the same time our solar system did, perhaps even in among the planets. Comets are made of a mixture of ices (water, methane, carbon dioxide, etc) and dust. These are precisely the materials that probably existed when the solar system was forming.

Hydrogen Envelope of Comet

When the Comet approaches the Sun, its nucleus begins to vaporize creating a hydrogen gas envelope around it. This envelope is not visible to the naked eye. The hydrogen in the envelope comes from water molecules breaking up when they absorb the ultraviolet photons from the Sun. The hydrogen atoms also absorb ultraviolet photons and can only be detected by space based telescope (Earths atmosphere absorbs UV radiation) when they emit back ultraviolet radiation.

Comets Tails
Ludwig Biermann propose the idea of solar wind to explain comet tails. Mariner 2 spacecraft captured the one such event in 1962.

Comets Tails
The solar wind produces three Comet tails that point away from the motion of the Comet.
The blue ion tails is ionized atoms of CN and C2. The dust tail is produced when the photons from the Sun strike the dust particles and produce radiation pressure on them. This causes the dust particles to drift away from the coma.
The effect of solar wind on dust particles is less compared to that on ions, this gives the dust tails a curved shape.

The third tail is made up of Sodium and is usually invisible to the unaided eyes.

Comets and their Spectra

Spectroscopy is a technique in which light is broken into its component colors. Each chemical element show their fingerprint in the spectrum of the object. We can thus find the composition of Comets by identifying the fingerprints. Most of the information on Comets come from Infrared radiation, because Comets are cold objects they radiate strongly at Infrared radiation.

Observed Composition
Coma
H, C, C2, C3, CH, CN, HCN, CH3, NH, NH2, O, OH, H2O, Na, K, Ca, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu plus dust particles with silicates

Tail
CH+, CO+, CO2+, N2+, OH+, H2O+, Ca+, plus dust particles with silicates

Whats That Up In The Sky???

COMETS Made of ice-have tails Stay in space ASTEROIDS Made of rock and metal Stay in space METEORS Made of rock and metal Fall into Earths atmosphere Gravity pulls to Earth; they burn up as they fall

Orbit the sun

Orbit the sun

Comet Collisions
Comet collision with Earth can bring devastation to life on Earth. Jupiter in our solar system is the largest planet and thus exerts greater gravitational pull on incoming Comets. Study of Shoemaker-Levey collision with Jupiter gave us important facts about Comet collisions.

Comet Collisions

Courtesy: NASA/JPL

References
www.wikipedia.org Chapman, C. R.; Morrison, D.; Zellner, B. (1975). "Surface properties of asteroids: A synthesis of polarimetry, radiometry, and spectrophotometry". Icarus 25 (1): 104 130. Bibcode 1975Icar...25..104C.doi:10.1016/00 19-1035(75)90191-8. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ "Lagrange Points" by Enrique Zeleny, Wolfram Demonstrations Project.

Thank You!!!