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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 .
Ceres (minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is a dwarf planet in the middle main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.It was the first known asteroid, discovered on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo Astronomical Observatory in Sicily, and announced as a new planet.
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]
The vast majority of minor planets are evenly distributed between the inner-, central and outer parts of the asteroid belt, which are separated by the two Kirkwood gaps at 2.5 and 2.82 AU. Nearly 97.5% of all minor planets are main-belt asteroids (MBA), while Jupiter trojans , Mars-crossing and near-Earth asteroids each account for less than 1% ...
The number of dwarf planets in the Solar System is unknown. Estimates have run as high as 200 in the Kuiper belt [1] and over 10,000 in the region beyond. [2] However, consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many large trans-Neptunian objects, as well as spectroscopic analysis of their surfaces, suggests that the number of dwarf planets may be much lower, perhaps only nine among ...
The four largest asteroids constitute half the mass of the asteroid belt. Ceres is the only asteroid that appears to have a plastic shape under its own gravity and hence the only one that is a dwarf planet. [74] It has a much higher absolute magnitude than the other asteroids, of around 3.32, [75] and may possess a surface layer of ice. [76]
The listed objects currently include most objects in the asteroid belt and moons of the giant planets in this size range, but many newly discovered objects in the outer Solar System are missing, such as those included in the following reference. [58]
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.