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This list includes few examples since there are about 589 asteroids in the asteroid belt with a measured radius between 20 and 49 km. [171] Many thousands of objects of this size range have yet to be discovered in the trans-Neptunian region.
By far the largest object within the belt is the dwarf planet Ceres. 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 ...
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]
Asteroids in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter Ceres, a dwarf planet; Pallas; Vesta; Hygiea; Asteroids number in the hundreds of thousands. For longer lists, see list of exceptional asteroids, list of asteroids, or list of Solar System objects by size. Asteroid moons; A number of smaller groups distinct from the asteroid ...
It is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history to date. [159] 1909 – Andrija Mohorovičić discovers the Moho discontinuity, the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle. [160] 1912 – Alfred Wegener suggests the continental drift hypothesis, that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth. [161]
The Kuiper belt, sometimes called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) [37] to approximately 55 AU from the Sun. [38] It is similar to the asteroid belt, although it is far larger; 20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive.
At a diameter of 964 km, Ceres is the largest object in the main asteroid belt and comprises about one-third of the belt's total mass. Ceres possesses sufficient gravity to form a rounded, ellipsoid shape, suggesting that it is close to being in hydrostatic equilibrium [ 6 ] —one of the conditions for defining a dwarf planet according to the ...