With all the recent buzz over asteroid AD14, the meteor over Chelyabinsk, the fragments of meteorite recovered in Russia’s Ural mountains, and yesterday’s news that the fireball originated from our solar system’s asteroid belt, one can’t help but wonder: what’s the difference between all these -oids, -ors and -ites? Are they all just different words for the same space rock, or do they actually mean something?
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-releases-first-video-of-asteroid-da14s-close-encou-5985666
https://gizmodo.com/meteorite-explodes-over-russia-hundreds-injured-5984483
https://gizmodo.com/fragments-of-russias-meteor-could-be-worth-40x-their-we-5985040
https://gizmodo.com/we-now-know-the-origin-of-russias-meteor-5986957
For a detailed explanation, see here, but this great little infographic by Tim Lillis of Narwhal Creative tells you most of what you need to know when it comes to the official nomenclature for near-Earth objects (or, in the case of meteorites, on-Earth objects):
https://gizmodo.com/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-asteroids-come-5856820
