Saturn has the most prominent rings composed of small rocks and ice. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have smaller rings. Asteroids orbit the sun and are mostly located between Mars and Jupiter. They range in size from dust to the dwarf planet Ceres. Asteroids are classified by their composition of carbon, silicates, or iron and nickel. Comets are small icy bodies that follow highly elliptical orbits and develop tails when close to the sun due to sublimating ice being pushed by solar winds. They are composed of an icy nucleus, dust and gas coma, and an elongated tail.

1. STELLAR OBJECTS

2. RINGS OF THE GAS GIANTS
• Saturn has the most obvious rings;
consists of billions of pieces of rocks
and ice ranging from dust to house
size objects
• Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also
have very small rings

3. ASTEROIDS
• A small, rocky object that orbits the sun
• most asteroids are located in a band
between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
• orbit in elliptical orbits
• Ceres so large and a sphere it has been
classified a dwarf planet

4. ASTEROIDS
Classified by Composition:
1. Carbon Materials
2. Silicate Materials
3. Iron and Nickel

5. ASTEROIDS
• Asteroid Belt: Located in between
Mars and Jupiter, could not be made
into a planet due to Jupiter’s
gravitational pull
• Trojan Asteroids: Group of asteroids
that can be found in front of and
behind Jupiter’s gravitational pull

6. COMETS
• A small body of rock, ice, cosmic dust
that follows a highly elliptical orbit
around the sun that gives off gas and
dust in the form of a tail as it passes
close to the sun

7. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “SMALL BODY”?

8. COMET COMPOSITION
1. Nucleus/Core: made of rock, metal,
and ice, 1km to 100km in diameter
2. Coma: cloud of gas and dust around
the nucleus, can extend 1 million km
out
3. Tail: Caused by ice changing to gas,
pushed away from core by solar winds
thus tail only points away from sun up
to 80 million km long

9. Oort Cloud: A spherical region that
surrounds the solar system, extends
from the Kuiper Belt to almost halfway
to the nearest star, and contains
billions of comets
Kuiper Belt: A region of the solar
system that starts just beyond the orbit
of Neptune and that contains dwarf
planets and other small bodies made
mostly of ice

10. Meteoroid: A relative small rocky
body that travels through space
Meteor: A bright streak of light
that results when a meteoroid
burns up in Earth’s atmosphere;
“shooting star”
Meteorite: A meteoroid or any
small part or a meteoroid that
reaches Earth’s surface; classified as
stony, iron, and stony-iron; almost
all produced from collisions
between asteroids