Asteroid Belt

Cosma / Communication / Knowledge / Realm / Physical / Universe / Solar System / Asteroid Belt
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Asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called asteroids or minor planets. It is also called the main asteroid belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. About half its mass is contained in the four largest asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. The total mass of the asteroid belt is about 4% that of the Moon. Ceres, the only object in the asteroid belt large enough to be a dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter, whereas Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea have mean diameters less than 600 km. The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle. — Wikipedia

Asteroid Belt (Encyclopædia Britannica)
Asteroid Belt (COSMOS: The SAO Encyclopedia of Astronomy)

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Inspiration

Articles about the Asteroid Belt (Big Think)

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Innovation

Science

Asteroid Videos (ViewSpace, Space Telescope Science Institute)

Object Search (International Astronomical Union)

Asteroid Belt (Wolfram Alpha)
Minor Planets (Wolfram Alpha)

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Preservation

History

In 1596, Johannes Kepler wrote, “Between Mars and Jupiter, I place a planet,” in his Mysterium Cosmographicum, stating his prediction that a planet would be found there. While analyzing Tycho Brahe’s data, Kepler thought that too large a gap existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter to fit Kepler’s then-current model of where planetary orbits should be found.

In an anonymous footnote to his 1766 translation of Charles Bonnet’s Contemplation de la Nature, the astronomer Johann Daniel Titius of Wittenberg noted an apparent pattern in the layout of the planets, now known as the Titius-Bode Law. If one began a numerical sequence at 0, then included 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, etc., doubling each time, and added four to each number and divided by 10, this produced a remarkably close approximation to the radii of the orbits of the known planets as measured in astronomical units, provided one allowed for a “missing planet” (equivalent to 24 in the sequence) between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

When William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, the planet’s orbit matched the law almost perfectly, leading astronomers to conclude that a planet had to be between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

On January 1, 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi, chairman of astronomy at the University of Palermo, Sicily, found a tiny moving object in an orbit with exactly the radius predicted by this pattern. He dubbed it “Ceres”, after the Roman goddess of the harvest and patron of Sicily. Piazzi initially believed it to be a comet, but its lack of a coma suggested it was a planet. Thus, the aforementioned pattern predicted the semimajor axes of all eight planets of the time (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus). — Wikipedia

TED-Ed (YouTube Channel)
TED-Ed (Official Website)

The First Asteroid Ever Discovered (Carrie Nugent, TED-Ed)

Asteroids: The Discovery of Asteroids (European Space Agency)
Discovery of Asteroids (National Air and Space Museum)

Dawn was a space probe that was launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. It entered orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. In 2017, NASA announced that the planned nine-year mission would be extended until the probe’s hydrazine fuel supply was depleted. On November 1, 2018, NASA announced that Dawn had depleted its hydrazine, and the mission was ended. The spacecraft is currently in a derelict, but stable, orbit around Ceres. Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies, the first spacecraft to visit Vesta and Ceres, and the first to orbit a dwarf planet. — Wikipedia

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (YouTube Channel)
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Official Website)

Dawn (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, YouTube Playlist)
Legacy of NASA’s Dawn, Near the End of its Mission (NASA/JPL)
Dawn (JPL, NASA)
Dawn Mission (NASA)

Library

DDC: 523.44 Asteroid Belt (Library Thing)
Subject: Asteroid Belt (Library Thing)

Subject: Asteroid Belt (Open Library)

LCC: QB 651 Asteroid Belt (Library of Congress)
Subject: Asteroid Belt (Library of Congress)

Subject: Asteroid Belt (WorldCat)

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Participation

Education

Astroids – Level 1 (StarChild, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA)
Astroids – Level 2 (StarChild, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA)

Asteroid Belt (Cosmos4Kids)

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
OER Commons: Open Educational Resources

Community

Organization

Minor Planet Center (International Astronomical Union)
Asteroids & Remote Planets Section (British Astronomical Association)

News

Asteroid Belt (Nova Research Highlights, American Astronomical Society)
Asteroid Belt (EurekaAlert, AAAS)
Asteroid Belt (JSTOR)
Asteroid Belt (Astronomy Magazine)
Asteroid Belt (Science Daily)
Asteroid Belt (Phys.org)

Recent News from Phys.org …

Enormous 'Cat's Tail' tells of cosmic collision...
on October 29, 2026 at 3:40 pm
Sixty-three light-years from Earth, in the small, faint constellation known as Pictor (which is Latin for "painter"), there lies a strange structure that has puzzled astronomers for the last two years. Nicknamed the "Cat's Tail," this dark feature stretches across an abyss of space about a thousand times the average distance between Earth and the sun.
Pedal to the metal: NASA's Psyche heads toward...
on October 23, 2026 at 3:10 pm
With a successful Mars gravity assist in its rearview mirror, NASA's Psyche spacecraft has fired up its thrusters and is accelerating toward the metal-rich asteroid of the same name. During the first leg of its journey, following an October 2023 launch, the mission used its electric propulsion system intermittently to maneuver into the right position to harness Mars' gravity for a propellant-saving speed boost and a slight trajectory change.
Lucy mission marks 5 years of discoveries
on October 20, 2026 at 11:00 am
On Oct. 16, 2021, NASA's Lucy spacecraft began its journey to the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids with an early morning launch. Now less than a year away from the first-ever close-up of a Trojan, the Southwest Research Institute–led mission has already made several findings during its first five years.
Japan launches spacecraft to mysterious moons of...
on October 20, 2026 at 9:40 am
A Japanese spacecraft rocketed toward Mars on Tuesday on a quest to explore its mysterious moons and bring back samples.
How did Mars get its moons? Japan's MMX space...
on October 15, 2026 at 7:40 pm
The Earth got its moon when a small planet collided with our planet more than 4 billion years ago. This impact hurled molten rock into space, which eventually coalesced to form the satellite we can see every night from across our planet.