Solar System Debris Vocabulary

Comet

a relatively small extraterrestrial body consisting of a frozen mass that travels around the sun in a highly elliptical orbit

Oort Cloud

a spherical region of comets that surrounds the solar system

Meteor Shower

a transient shower of meteors when a meteor swarm enters the earth's atmosphere

Meteor

any of the small solid extraterrestrial bodies that hits the earth's atmosphere

Coma

the luminous cloud of particles surrounding the frozen nucleus of a comet

Asteroid Belt

the region of interplanetary space between Mars and Jupiter where most asteroids are found

Meteoroid

A chunk of rock or dust in space

Meteorite

A meteoroid that passes through the atmosphere and hits Earth's surface

Kuiper Belt

A region of the solar system that is just beyond the orbit of Neptune and that contains small bodies made mostly of ice

Asteroid

A small, rocky object that orbits the sun; most asteroids are located in a band between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter

Ion/Dust Tail

Thin stream of ionized gas that is pushed away from the head of a comet by the solar wind