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The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets .
Phaeton (alternatively Phaethon / ˈ f eɪ. ə θ ən / or Phaëton / ˈ f eɪ. ə t ən /; from Ancient Greek: Φαέθων, romanized: Phaéthōn, pronounced [pʰa.é.tʰɔːn]) is a hypothetical planet hypothesized by the Titius–Bode law to have existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the destruction of which supposedly led to the formation of the asteroid belt (including the ...
The asteroid and comet belts orbit the Sun from the inner rocky planets into outer parts of the Solar System, interstellar space. [ 16 ] [ 17 ] [ 18 ] An astronomical unit , or AU, is the distance from Earth to the Sun, which is approximately 150 billion meters (93 million miles). [ 19 ]
At their distance from the Sun, accretion was too slow to allow planets to form before the solar nebula dispersed, and thus the initial disc lacked enough mass density to consolidate into a planet. [67] The Kuiper belt lies between 30 and 55 AU from the Sun, while the farther scattered disc extends to over 100 AU, [47] and the distant Oort ...
An asteroid called 2020 CD3 was bound to Earth for several years before leaving the planet's orbit in 2020 and another called 2022 NX1 became a mini-moon of Earth in 1981 and 2022 and will return ...
Image of the main asteroid belt and the Trojan asteroids. The asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter. It is made of thousands of rocky planetesimals from 1,000 kilometres (621 mi) to a few meters across. These are thought to be debris of the formation of the Solar System that could not form a planet due to Jupiter's gravity.
10 Hygiea is a major asteroid located in the main asteroid belt.With a mean diameter of between 425 and 440 km and a mass estimated to be 3% of the total mass of the belt, [11] it is the fourth-largest asteroid in the Solar System by both volume and mass, and is the largest of the C-type asteroids (dark asteroids with a carbonaceous surface) in classifications that use G type for 1 Ceres.
A small asteroid will be pulled into orbit around the Earth as a “mini-moon” later this month before the space rock departs into other parts of the solar system.. The 10m-wide asteroid, dubbed ...