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The total mass of the asteroid belt is significantly less than Pluto's, and roughly twice that of Pluto's moon Charon. 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.
253 Mathilde is an asteroid in the intermediate asteroid belt, approximately 50 kilometers in diameter, that was discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa at Vienna Observatory on 12 November 1885. It has a relatively elliptical orbit that requires more than four years to circle the Sun.
[56] [60] [61] During this primary depletion period, the effects of the giant planets and planetary embryos left the asteroid belt with a total mass equivalent to less than 1% that of the Earth, composed mainly of small planetesimals. [59] This is still 10–20 times more than the current mass in the main belt, which is now about 0.0005 M E. [62]
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]
152 Atala is a large main belt asteroid that was discovered by brothers Paul Henry and Prosper Henry on 2 November 1875, but the discovery was credited to Paul. It is a type D asteroid, meaning that it is composed of carbon, organic rich silicates and possibly water ice.
Decades later, this region was named after him, the Kuiper belt. New asteroid populations were discovered, as Trojans since 1906 by Max Wolf, [110] and Centaurs since 1977 by Charles Kowal, [111] among many other. From 1957 on, technology allowed for direct space exploration of the Solar System's bodies.
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 ...
243 Ida is an asteroid in the Koronis family of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 29 September 1884 by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa at Vienna Observatory and named after a nymph from Greek mythology. Later telescopic observations categorized Ida as an S-type asteroid, the most numerous type in the inner asteroid belt.