Asteroid Belt

Cosma / Communication / Knowledge / Realm / Physical / Universe / Solar System / Asteroid Belt
—————————

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)

———————–

Inspiration

Articles about the Asteroid Belt (Big Think)

———————-

Innovation

Science

Asteroid Videos (ViewSpace, Space Telescope Science Institute)

Object Search (International Astronomical Union)

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

————————–

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)

—————————

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 …

One graph attempts to connect every object in the...
on May 12, 2026 at 10:20 pm
If you've ever taken an introductory astronomy class, you've probably seen the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram. This graph maps out the life cycle of stars by plotting their temperature against their luminosity, and has been a "cheat sheet" for stellar astrophysics for over a century. But the universe is full of more than just stars, and a new paper in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific by Gabriel Steward and Matthew Hedman of the University of Idaho, attempts […]
What it would have been like to experience the...
on May 11, 2026 at 10:00 pm
A great Tyrannosaurus rex strides through the conifer trees of her territory, sniffing the air. She picks up the scent from the carcass of a dead horned dinosaur, Triceratops, that she was feeding on yesterday. She walks over and strips off some more shreds of meat, but the smell is foul even for her.
A close brush with Mars will reshape NASA's...
on May 9, 2026 at 12:48 pm
NASA's Psyche spacecraft will get a boost from Mars on Friday, May 15, passing just 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) from the planet's surface at some 12,333 mph (19,848 kph). The spacecraft will harness the planet's gravitational pull to speed up and adjust its trajectory toward the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, one of the more unusual objects in our solar system.
Early data from Vera C. Rubin Observatory reveals...
on April 2, 2026 at 8:40 pm
Using preliminary data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered over 11,000 new asteroids. The data were confirmed by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC), making this the largest single batch of asteroid discoveries submitted in the past year. The discoveries were made using data from Rubin's early optimization surveys and offer a powerful preview of the observatory's transformative impact on solar system science.
Giant craters may reveal if Psyche is a lost...
on March 28, 2026 at 2:00 pm
When we think of asteroids, we almost immediately think of giant rocks bouncing around like the iconic chase scene in "The Empire Strikes Back," and we often hear how they are remnants from the birth of the solar system. While the asteroids that comprise the Main Asteroid Belt of our solar system are not only spread far apart from one another, they are also not all made of rock. One asteroid approximately the size of the state of Massachusetts called 16 Psyche is made of metal, which planetary […]