Readers are like, Requesting Things

Last night, as I lay snuggling in my bed, I was startled awake by a cellular telephone call from none other than Jeff Collamore, aka the patron saint and inventor of Physics. He asked me a question that I should have known the answer to at the time, but alas, my sleepy mind was a jumbled zone. He said: "What is the difference between a meteor and an asteroid?" So here is the official Praise Science Response, and then some:

Meteor - The streak of light associated with space rocks and other interstellar debris as they pass through Earth's atmosphere
Meteoroid - The actual physical rock that creates a 'meteor' streak
Meteorite - Meteoroids that survive the descent through the atmosphere and physically land on the surface of Earth.
Asteroid - a medium-sized rocky object which orbits the Sun, typically smaller than a planet but larger than a meteoroid. Unlike comets, asteroids have no atmosphere. Their size can range from less than a mile to over 600 miles in diameter.
Comet - a celestial body mainly composed of frozen gas and dust which orbits the sun, characterized by an elliptical or parabolic orbit and a visible ion tail which points away from the sun.

These guys already knew all this.

Also, reader Elliot asked me a question this morning about time zones on the Moon. Stay tuned for more on that later...