What is the composition of asteroid belt?

Answer 1

It depends on the type of meteor. There are three major types of meteors: iron, stony-iron and stony. If it's an iron meteor, it is a hundred percent made up of iron and nickel. Stony-iron meteors comprise of 50 percent iron and 50 percent silicates. Stony meteors are composed of 10 to 15 percent iron and nickel with 85 to 90 percent silicates.

Answer 2

The typical composition of an asteroid depends on its distance from the Sun. At the outer edges of the asteroid belt, that is between three and three and a half times further from the Sun than the Earth, over eighty percent of the asteroids are known as C-type.

The C stands for carbon and the surfaces of these asteroids are almost coal-black. These asteroids contain large quantities of carbon molecules as well as the more usual rocks and metals. They are very similar in composition to the carbonaceous chondrite meteorites that sometimes fall on Earth. It is thought that these meteorites are chippings, smashed off during collisions between asteroids.

Closer to the Sun, at just over twice the Earth's orbital distance, the proportion of C-type asteroids is only about 40 percent. Here, the majority of asteroids are grey, without the carbon material and principally made of silicate compound rock.

These too resemble a type of meteorite found on Earth, the chondrites. Although these two types of asteroid form the majority of examples, there are some that appear to be composed of little but metal and, again, there are metal meteorites found on Earth

Answer 3

A meteor is the streak of light that we see as a space rock burns up when it hits the Earth's atmosphere. Before it hits the atmosphere, we would call it a "meteoroid", and if it survives passage through the atmosphere and strikes the ground, we call it a "meteorite".

An asteroid is a space rock that's big enough to see while it is still in space.

A comet is a space rock that has some volatile chemicals like water, methane or other materials frozen as ices. When the comet gets close enough to the Sun for the sunlight to melt some of the ice, it develops a "tail" and becomes visible.

As you can see, there's going to be some overlap between these categories. When all the ice melts away from a comet, the resulting rocks might become an asteroid or meteoroids; if the rock hits the Earth, it will be a meteor. What we see as "meteor showers" are actually the dust and pebbles that have been shed from ancient comets as they orbited the Sun for thousands of years.

Answer 4

Asteroids are likely to be more solid, denser and larger than a comet. An asteroid is likely to be primarily composed of rock or metals. The orbits of asteroids are more likely to be less radically eccentric, and more likely to be within the "inner" solar system or in the asteroid belt.

Comets have been compared to "dirty snowballs", with a larger proportion of frozen volatile gasses. They spend the vast majority of their time in the outer reaches of the solar system far from the Sun. When a comet comes much closer than Saturn - certainly by the time it passes the orbit of Jupiter - the ices of the comet are already starting to vaporize. Otherwise, it wouldn't develop a tail, and wouldn't be visible so far from the Earth. After passing near the Sun so many times, comets often disintegrate into a collection of loose rubble, once the volatiles have all evaporated and there isn't anything left to hold the dust together.

Answer 5

Meteors are composed of mainly Rocks and Metals, whereas Comets are composed of Ice and dust.

Answer 6

Comets are made up from ice and frozen mud, being referred to as dirty snowballs sometimes.

Answer 7

Comets are mostly water ice and rock. Earth is mainly rock and a big core of iron.

Answer 8

a meteor is a hunk of metel and rock that flies through space. metel and rock.

Answer 9

The asteroid belt is mostly made of rocky debris.

Answer 10

Comets have more ice.