ASTA01H3 Chapter 4: Solar System Debris
Document Summary
I ntro to astronomy and astrology part i. asteroids are relatively small, predominantly rocky objects that revolve around the. Few asteroids are larger than 300 km in diameter. over 250,000 asteroids and their precise orbits catalogued asteroids. The total number of known asteroids now exceeds 500,000. The vast majority of these bodies are found in the asteroid belt, located between 2. 1 and 3. 3 au from the sun. such a compact concentration of asteroids in a well-defined belt suggests that they are either the fragments of a planet broken up a long time ago or primal rocks that never managed to accumulate into a genuine planet. probably not the remnants of a planet, as the total mass isn"t sufficient to suggest this origin. asteroids have been found to differ amongst themselves in composition, not only against the planets and moons: the darkest/least reflective ones contain large fractions of carbon in their makeup.
