meteoroid

any of the small celestial bodies that are thought to orbit the sun, possibly as the remains of comets. When they enter the earth's atmosphere, they become visible as meteors

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

meteoroid

(mee -tee-ŏ-roid) The collective term applied to meteoritic material in the Solar System, usually replaced by the terms micrometeorite for particles with mass less than 10^–6 gram and meteorite for bodies with mass greater than about 10⁵ grams. The majority of the mass of the meteoroid cloud around the Sun is made up of particles with individual masses between 10^–7 and 10^–3 gram. Meteoroids are usually produced by the decay of short-period comets and the collisional fragmentation of asteroids. In the main they move around the Sun in low-inclination direct orbits. The space density of meteoroids maximizes near the orbit of Mars and then falls off as 1/r ^1.5, where r is the distance from the Sun. Individual meteoroids in the mass range 10^–6 to 10⁴ grams are fragile crumbly rocky dust particles with a composition similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. See also meteor.

Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006

meteoroid

[′med·ē·ə‚rȯid]

(astronomy)

Any solid object moving in interplanetary space that is smaller than a planet or asteroid but larger than a molecule.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Meteoroid

a relatively small solid body that moves in outer space. The aggregate of meteoroids revolving around the sun forms the meteoric material in interplanetary space. Meteoroids are cometary debris or fragments of asteroids and in their motion occasionally encounter the earth and other planets.

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References in periodicals archive

"But when the Moon passed through one of these meteoroid streams, enough vapor was ejected for us to detect it.

Meteoroid Strikes Eject Precious Water from Moon

A meteor shower occurs when the Earth intersects a stream of meteoroids that has formed as a result of the disintegration of a larger body (usually a comet but occasionally an asteroid).

Meteors

Meteoroids come from comets, and comets -- and other celestial objects like them -- are about the closest we'll ever get to the big bang.

Shooting stars: What we know and still need to find out about the Perseid meteor shower

If any part of the meteoroid survives burning up and hits the Earth, that remaining bit is then called a meteorite.

YOU ASK & WE ANSWER

A meteor is the "light" of a meteoroid as it and the atmosphere heat up.

Is the sky falling?

Meteor Shower--A regular (typically annual) event in which the orbit of Earth intersects that of a meteoroid stream, causing a number of meteors with approximately parallel trajectories appearing to emanate from the same radiant.

Meteors

Very rarely does a piece of a large meteoroid survive to fall all the way to the ground.

Meteors catch some falling stars: any night is fair game for meteor observers, but there are times when you might catch a shower!

The Apollo suit employed 21 of these superthin layers and replaced the reflective, aluminized silver thermal meteoroid top with nylon white as early as 1964.

The right buff

"But when the Moon passed through one of these meteoroid streams, enough vapour was ejected for us to detect it.

NASA study finds meteor showers eject water on Moon

But both branches are so long-lasting--meaning the meteoroid streams are so wide--that they overlap greatly.

The Taurids are back