Incoming Asteroid

Hello readers! I was reading today a piece titled 'Asteroid 2000 EM26: 'potentially hazardous' space rock to fly close to Earth' (I mean, come on, that's a pretty catchy title, how could I not - even though I know nothing about asteroids) and so, this asteroid, the size of three football fields, will be passing Earth uncomfortably close on Tuesday, passing by Earth only 2.1 miles away. Reading on, this space rock is known as 2000 EM26 and will pass the Earth at just under nine times the distance to the moon so doesn't quite sound as alarming. So, knowing very little about asteroids, I am going to rectify that in this post!

What is it?
 
So it's time to narrow down the definitions through names:
Meteors: they are just bits of dust or rocks from space that get sucked into the Earth's gravitational pull when they come to close to it. When they enter our atmosphere and start to plummet towards the ground, they begin to burn up usually about 60 miles before they get close enough to hit the ground. When the meteors burn up, we on the ground can sometimes see the brief flash of light. This is what people call "shooting stars." Usually, the "space dust" that make meteors comes from the tails of passing comets. Every once in a while, a meteor will be big enough to weather its fiery descent and it will land on Earth, where it earns the title "meteorite."
Asteroids: on the other hand, are also known as "minor planets." They are made up of the same substances as planets, but they at a much smaller scale. Most asteroids orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Although some asteroids have sizes comparable to some moons in our solar system, these are not moons because they only orbit the Sun, and not any planets, as the moons do. The largest asteroids are called planetoids.
They differ from comets in that comets are made from ice, like that of dusty snowballs which orbit the Sun. They are made up of ices such as water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane mixed with dust. These materials came from the time when the Solar System was formed.Comets have an icy nucleus surrounded by a large cloud of gas and dust called the coma. The coma is created as the ice in the nucleus is warmed by the Sun and vaporizes. Comets can develop two tails as they travel closer to the Sun: a straight gas tail and a curved dust tail. The gas tail is created by the solar wind, pushing gas away from the comet's coma and pointing straight back from the Sun. 
Asteroid belt: so scattered in orbits around the sun are the start-like planetoids/asteroids bits and they orbit between Mars and Jupiter in a grouping known as the Main Asteroid Belt. The Main Asteroid Belt is more than two-and-a-half times as far as Earth does from the sun. It contains billions,and maybe even trillions of asteroids. Most of these are relatively small. The origin of the belt came during the early life of the solar system, where dust and rock circled the sun and was pulled together by gravity into planets. Jupiter, the largest planet, kept a number of the pieces from coalescing into another planet. Instead, its gravity disrupted the formation process, leaving an array of unattached asteroids.

Some asteroids are large, solid bodies and there are some more than 16 in the belt with a diameter greater than 150 miles. The larges asteroids, Vesta, Pallas and Hygiea, are 250 miles long and bigger. That region also contains the dwarf planet, Ceres. It is considered too small to be a full-fledged planet but makes up approximately a third of the mass of the asteroid belt. 

Thanks for reading!