CAS AS 101 Lecture : Asteroids .docx
16 Jan 2014
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Document Summary
150,000 asteroids known today: stars don"t move as fast as asteroids, the first asteroids was discovered 200 years ago, took 50 years to discover 10 of them, typical distance between asteroids are millions of km, collisions are rare, but they do occur, trojan asteroids share an orbit with jupiter, some have orbits that pass near earth, no gaps visible in belt. Asteroid locations: there are very few asteroids in the orbit of mars, there are very few asteroids outside about 3. 5 au from the sun, the inner boundary of the asteroid belt is very close to the orbit of mars when the outer boundary is much farther from orbit of jupiter. appear if we arrange asteroids by the semi major axes of their orbits, gaps, orbital periods of objects in gaps are simple fractions of jupiter"s 12 year orbit, caused by orbital resonances, you need fairly eccentric orbits to make things consistent.
