Asteroids, Comets, Meteors and Dwarf Planets

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Q: Fill in the blanks:(a) The planet which is farthest from the Sun is _______.(b) The planet which appears reddish in colour is ______.(c) A group of stars that appear to form a pattern in the sky is known as _____.(d) A celestial body that revolves around a planet is known as ______.(e) Shooting stars are actually not ______.(f) Asteroids are found between the orbits of _____ and ______.

(a) The planet which is farthest from the Sun is Neptune.(b) The planet which appears reddish in colour is Mars.(c) A group of stars that appear to form a pattern in the sky is known as constellation.(d) A celestial body that revolves around a planet is known as satellite.(e) Shooting stars are actually not stars.(f) Asteroids are found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Q: Name two objects other than planets which are members of the solar system?

The sun and the celestial bodies that revolve around it forms the solar system. It consists of sun, planets, satellites, asteroids, comets, meteors and meteorites. Halley's comet and the moon are two examples of celestial bodies that are part of the solar system but not planets.

Q: In our solar system, the inner-planetary region has chunks of matter ( much smaller in size compared to planets) called asteroids .They

Asteroids will move in orbits like planets and obey Kepler's law because they are also being acted upon by central gravitational forces.

Q: Shooting stars are actually not meteors.

Despite its name, shooting stars are not actually stars. Shooting star is either a piece of a small rock or dust from space that heats up when is enters the Earth's atmosphere. Shooting stars are basically meteors.

Q: A meteor burns up on entering earth's atmosphere due to:

Due to very high speed of meteor through earth's atmosphere, the heat produced by the friction of air is very large to cause the meteor burn.Thus, option D is correct.

Q: Fill in the blank:A shooting star is a _______.

Shooting stars look like stars that quickly shoot across the sky, but they are not stars. A shooting star is really a small piece of rock or dust that hits Earth's atmosphere from space. It moves so fast that it heats up and glows as it moves through the atmosphere. Shooting stars are actually what astronomers call meteors. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere before they reach the ground. However, once in a while a meteor is large enough than some of it survives and reaches Earth's surface. Then it is called a meteorite.Hence, shooting star is a common name for the visible path of a meteoroid as it enters the atmosphere, becoming a meteor.

Q: A heavenly body with a long tail is called a/an:

A comet is heavenly body with a long glowing tale of light behind it.It is also called 'tailed star'. Comets also are members of the sun's family like other heavenly bodies. A comet has three parts- nucleus, coma and tail.

Q: State whether true or false :Comets and meteoroids are also the minor members of the solar system.

Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock and dust when passing close to the Sun, heats up and begins to outgas, displaying a tail. Comets have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from several years to several millions of years. An example is the famous Halley's comet which has an orbital period of 76 years. A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from such sources as asteroids or comets, that originates in outer space and survives its impact with the Earth's surface. It is called a meteoroid before its impact.

Q: Name the comet which appears after every 76 years:

Halley's comet officially known as 1P/Halley is a comet that orbits the Sun every 76 years. It was last seen in the year 1986 and will be next seen in the year 2061.

Q: The tail of a comet always points__________ .

The streams of dust and gas thus released from a huge extremely tenous atmosphere around the comet called coma and force exerted on coma by the sun's radiation pressure and solar wind cause an anormous tail form which points away from the sun