The newly discovered tenth planet catalogued as 2003UB313.
It’s orbit is extremely more elliptical than even Pluto.
Takes over 10,500 years to orbit the Sun. Will be closer over next 72 years.
It’s at the outer regions of our solar system in the Kuiper Belt.
About ¾ the size of Pluto and about 3 times farther from the Sun.
It was discovered by the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif., on Jan. 8, 2005.
Lumps of snow and rocky dust.
Become visible only when they leave the Oort Cloud and travel towards the Sun.
When reaching the inner solar system, the Sun’s heat turns the snow into gas which creates a glowing head. The solar wind and radiation sweep away gas and dust from the nucleus into 2 tails.
About 135 comets are short-period comets, which orbit the Sun in less than 200 years. Long-period comets may take thousands of years.
Made of either rock, metal, or a combination of both.
The biggest, Ceres, has a diameter of 932 km.
Only those larger than 300 km are spherical.
Only 10 are larger than 250 km.
Can be as small as 1 meter across.
Contains billions of asteroids.
Orbit around the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Believed to be the leftovers of an unborn planet.
Most of the asteroids are only 1 meter long.
About 1 billion of them are over 1 km long.
Known as shooting stars because of their appearance.
They are pieces of rock and dust lost by comets or colliding asteroids, which burn up as they travel through the Earth’s atmosphere.
Each year, Earth sweeps up more than 220,000 tons of meteoroids.
Most all meteors heat up and evaporate after entering Earth’s atmosphere.
