Related topics: earth · nasa · solar system · orbit · meteorite

The asteroid belt's slow disappearing act

The asteroid belt is found orbiting between Mars and Jupiter and is a vast collection of rocks that is thought to be a planet that never formed. When our solar system formed 4.6 billion years ago, the material in this region ...

Amateur astronomers help track asteroid to French impact site

With help from amateur astronomers, scientists tracked how an asteroid traveled from space, broke up in Earth's atmosphere and sent fiery fragments shooting to the ground, gathering new information about how these space rocks ...

Some small asteroids can abruptly explode

Some asteroids are more dangerous than others, according to a report published in Nature Astronomy by an international team of researchers, led by astrophysicist Auriane Egal of the Montreal Planetarium in Canada. The team ...

Lucy's main belt target has its features named

When considering the unnamed major features of all the moons, asteroids, and comets in our solar system, there are still a lot of places out there that need proper names. That means the International Astronomical Union (IAU), ...

No collision, no life: Earth probably needed supplies from space

Earth is so far the only known planet on which life exists—with liquid water and a stable atmosphere. However, the conditions were not conducive to life when it formed. The gas-dust cloud from which all the planets in the ...

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Asteroid

Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets or planetoids, are small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun, especially in the inner Solar System; they are smaller than planets but larger than meteoroids. The term "asteroid" has historically been applied primarily to bodies in the inner Solar System since the outer Solar System was poorly known when it came into common usage. The distinction between asteroids and comets is made on visual appearance: Comets show a perceptible coma while asteroids do not.

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