BrainPop: Asteroids

Asteroids are big __________ that orbit the sun. Most of the asteroids in live in a ring between
Mars and ___________ called the Main Asteroid _________. They are __________ in shape and
they range in size from less than a kilometer in diameter to several hundred kilometers wide.
_______ is the largest asteroid we know of. Ceres is also known as a __________ planet.
So far more than _______________ asteroids have been identified… but astronomers think there
are between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids in the solar system. Besides _________ around the
sun, asteroids share a few other qualities with planets. They _________ around a central
_________. Like planets, some larger asteroids have their own _________, smaller asteroids
that revolve around them! Asteroids are made mostly of ___________________________.
Astronomers think that most asteroids were formed ______________ of years ago from the
same cosmic dust as our solar system… _____________ (or “shooting stars”) chances are it’s a
tiny asteroids. The ________ from the Earth’s atmosphere causes them to burn up when they
enter. They light up the way they do because they are actually on fire. Most meteors will burn up
completely before hitting the ground, but some meteors are too big to burn all the way up. Any
part of a meteor that makes it to the Earth’s surface without burning up is called a
_____________.
BrainPop: Comets
A comet is a large frozen chunk of gas and ________. And unlike Fast moving
“shooting stars”, _________ look like they are moving slowly or not at all from Earth. In
fact a comets look kind of like normal stars with a __________ around it. They are made
up mostly of ___________ _______ and _______ ___________. That’s why they are
sometimes called __________ ___________. Astronomers think most comets come
from the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud.

A comet usually stays inside those two bodies where it can’t be seen from Earth, but
sometimes its orbit sends a comet streaking towards the ___________.

As it gets closer to the sun, the _____ in the comet evaporates directly to a gas forming a
haze called the _________. The ________ surrounds the ________, or the solid part of
the comet. Together they form what’s known as the comet’s __________. Dust and ions
coming off of the nucleus form the comet’s ________, which can be _____________ of
kilometers long. The sun’s __________ pulls the comet in and then shoots it either into a
new __________, back where it came from, or out of the solar system.