Difference – Meteor, Comet, Asteroid, Meteoroid and Meteorite

What is the Difference between meteor, comet, asteroid etc is a nagging question for many. Well, here we explain them.

Contents

Jump To:
Comet | Asteroid
Meteoroid | Meteor | Meteorite
Fukang Meteorite

What is an Asteroid

Asteroids are large chunks of rocks that goes around the sun. They are classified so because, they are far smaller in size than any planet. usually few kilometers in radius. In fact, there is a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter which has a high concentration of asteroids and it is called The Asteroid Belt. Sometimes, they crash on each other and end up moving in a perturbed direction. Some of them might start moving towards the Sun crossing earth’s orbit as well. Their composition is majorly rocks and solid metals.

What is a Comet

Comets are also large bodies similar to an asteroid. Unlike asteroids they usually have three charecteristics :

1. Their composition contains a significant amount of ice, methane, ammonia etc.
2. They usually follow a fixed orbital time around the sun. The orbital period might vary from 70 years, 200 years or even more.
3. They follow an elliptical path with one end closer to sun and the other end very far from the sun.

When comets come closer to sun, the ice, methane etc present in them starts to “melt” and becomes a fuzzy, cloud-like shell around it called coma and a cone-shaped tail. Comet Hale Bopp was visible on the sky for 18 months during 1997.

What is a Meteoroid

When asteroids collide each other, small pieces gets chipped off and those smaller pieces floating in the space are called Meteoroid. They are termed as meteoroid only if their radius is smaller than a kilometer and most often they are only millimeters in size