Which is the farthest distance a particular distant known- identified object from the asteroid belt can get from the sun?

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According to

Space facts

The Asteroid Belt is located in an area of space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. That places it between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun

But asteroids from the asteroid Velt like Pallas and Hygiea have an aphelion of 3.4119 AU and 3.5024 AU respectively. So my question is, which is the farthest distance a particular distant known-identified object from the asteroid belt can get from the sun?

Updated since the question might seem unclear. I'm asking for a currently known object from the asteroid belt which gets closer to Jupiter.

tl;dr: The key part the question is the phrase

… from the asteroid belt…

There are lots of asteroids and only some of them are considered to be in "the asteroid belt" or to be main-belt asteroids. As @zephyr's answer to the question Do astronomers generally agree that the distinction between comets and astroids is not so clear? points out, even the definition of what is or isn't an asteroid is under debate and review. To the question of which is the farthest a main belt asteroid can get from the Sun, the answer depends on exactly how you draw your line.

There are also families and groups of asteroids, and while these have visually clear clumps and clusters when plotted in certain ways, they may not have absolute universally accepted definitions of who's in and who's out.

See this and this for some families within the main belt.

While the OP"s link says

The Asteroid Belt is located in an area of space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. That places it between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. The belt is about 1 AU thick.

that wording seems awkward since "between the orbits of between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter" only really puts it between 1.4 and 5.5 AU.

The first sentence of Wikipedia's Asteroid belt says:

The asteroid belt is the circumstellar disc in the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter

repeat, "roughly" and it goes on to say

The asteroid belt is also termed the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids.

The article also includes the figure shown below, showing that there are plenty of other groups of asteroids besides those designated as "main belt". I am not sure if there is a 100% absolutely IAU-official definition that you can apply to any set of orbital parameters that will return Yes or No to the question "is this one main belt?" but in general it looks like asteroids with a semimajor axis beyond 3.3 AU, or a high eccentricity, or a high inclination would not be called "main belt" by most astronomers.

As @PM2Ring points out Kirkwood Gaps delineate statistical sub-groupings of the main belt.

A Kirkwood gap is a gap or dip in the distribution of the semi-major axes (or equivalently of the orbital periods) of the orbits of main-belt asteroids. They correspond to the locations of orbital resonances with Jupiter.

You can see that while there is a minimum around 3.3 AU due to the 2:1 resonance, there are "green" stragglers extending to the right that continue on past the arbitrary 3.5 AU edge of this plot of "main belt asteroids".

Source

Source

Screen shot from Scott Manley's video What Rock Star Brian May Discovered About Interplanetary Dust

which gives a better idea that there are groups and stragglers than the image in the OP's link:

Source

Which is the farthest distance a particular distant known- identified object from the asteroid belt can get from the sun? - Astronomy

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Just my opinion, but ( Score: 5, Funny)

Maybe we need to take the naming rights away from these astronomers.

Re:Just my opinion, but ( Score: 5, Funny)

I'm just glad he wasn't allowed to name it Trans-Uraniany McTrans-Uranianface.

Re: ( Score: 2, Insightful)

These kinds of problems in the society can always be solved with generous amounts of single malt.

Re: ( Score: 3)

They know what they're doing.

Farther McFarface was already taken.

And farfarfarout.com was still available as of this morning.

Re: ( Score: 1)

Or for short, "Tranny McTrannyface".

Re: ( Score: 2)

Yes. They decided on the much more mature name of "Bunghole"

Re: ( Score: 3)

I propose that the members of the USB Working Group be dropped on their heads repeatedly until they start demonstrating an ability to adopt sane naming conventions. This may take a while, so I&rsquom calling for volunteers with strong arms and backs.

Re: ( Score: 2)

They should have went with "Ludicrous Far Out".

Re: ( Score: 1)

We are currently the litterbugs of the Solar System.

Re: ( Score: 1)

It's some astronomers, not the astrologers, who are demonstrable morons. Leave the astrologers out of it they are not meddling in the affairs of astronomy institutions.

BTW, there is a common misunderstanding that astrology, which is all about moments in time, has something to do with the objects that astronomers study. I can sort of understand the child-like confusion, since a horoscope is a study of a particular moment in time that is recorded by a clock with 12 major hands (Sun, Moo, Mer, Ven, Mar, Jup

Re: ( Score: 2)

I believe astrologers continue to believe Pluto is a planet, linked to the sign Scorpio. (Not the constellation Scorpio, since the zodiac used in astrology fell out of sync with the constellations a long time ago.) However, I don't know of any central astrological authority, so it would be up to individual astrologers whether to consider it or remove it and just link Scorpio with Mars again.

Re: Error in the number ( Score: 3, Funny)

Unless the new planet has an Intel inside. Then the satellite should be SX, and the combined system of planet and satellite DX.

Re:Error in the number ( Score: 5, Informative)

The first Planet Nine was Ceres, and it was demoted again after the discovery of lots of objects in what we call now the Asteroid belt. Then in 1931, Pluto was promoted a planet because for some time, no one found other objects that far out that weren't moons of Neptune. And then suddenly, the number of objects discovered around Pluto increased, and Pluto wasn't even the largest of them (Ceres on the other hand is the largest object in the Asteroid belt). Thus Pluto shared the fate of Ceres and got demoted from planetary status again.

We should have kept the original definition of planets: sky objects that move against the stellar background, hence the greek name 'planetos', wanderer. Then we would have to include for instance Barnard's star or Proxima Centauri into the definition, and Sun and Moon would be planets too.

The definition of a Planet is arbitrary, as there is no clear cut-off between white dwarfs, planets, comets, asteroids and space debris. All of them circle larger objects which radiate energy from nuclear fusion, but don't have nuclear fusion themselves. Whatever definition you come up with, it will be arbitrary again, and lots of people like you will complain and find holes or apparent holes in that definition.

But the most useless definition of planets is "planets are objects we call planets". And that's what you are promoting with your insistence on the planetary status of Pluto.

'Farfarout' is most distant object in our solar system. But it's not Planet Nine.

Astronomers have identified the most distant known object in our solar system — a dwarf planet nicknamed Farfarout that orbits far beyond Pluto. This remote mini-planet swings so far away from the sun that from Farfarout's perspective Earth and Saturn look like neighbors.

With an orbit that's an average of 132 times the distance between Earth and the sun, or 132 astronomical units (AU), it beats "Farout," the previous record holder for most-distant solar object Farout orbits the sun at an average of 124 A.U. Farfarout's technical name is 2018 AG37, and it will likely get an official name as a dwarf planet down the road.

While this space rock is big enough to take the classification "dwarf planet" and far, far out in the solar system, it's nowhere near massive enough to be Planet 9, the theoretical object astronomers were searching for when they found it. Planet 9 is believed to orbit well beyond Neptune, if it exists, and have a mass many times that of Earth's that has allowed it to stretch and warp the orbits of other outer-solar system objects with its gravity. Farfarout doesn't have the bulk to account for that stretching and warping.

To get a sense of just how far away 132 AU is, consider the vast distance between Earth and Mars. As Live Science has reported, even during ideal conditions using a current NASA rocket the journey between the two planets would take months. But Mars orbits just 1.524 AU from the sun. Seen from Farfarout, the journey between Earth and Mars would look the same as a flight from Miami to Albuquerque would look to an observer on the moon.

Farfarout doesn't just hang out at 132 AU, however.

"A single orbit of Farfarout around the sun takes a millennium," David Tholen, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii and co-discoverer of Farfarout, said in a statement. "Because of this long orbital, it moves very slowly across the sky, requiring several years of observations to precisely determine its trajectory."

Two years of observations have revealed that Farfarout's path around the sun creates a long ellipse. At its closest, Farfarout plunges to a mere 24 AU from the sun, closer to the sun than the orbits of Pluto and Neptune. But at its farthest, it reaches deep into space, 175 AU from the sun. That's about 0.06% of the journey to the nearest star.

The researchers estimate that Farfarout is about 25 miles (400 km) wide, which would make it among the smallest of the dwarf planets. It's likely, the researchers said, that more such objects will turn up as technology for detecting dim, distant rocks improves and researchers continue hunting for the mysterious Planet Nine.

Contents

which one is the correct form? Shouldn't "b" be capitalized since it is a name? Nergaal (talk) 01:34, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Not a proper name, I think. Nouns in English (as opposed to, say, German) are not capitalized unless they refer to a particular named object. Other stars than the Sun will presumably be found to have "main belts" too: regions where orbits are nearly stable against the perturbations of major planets, so objects can collect and remain there there over time. It's kind of a close call—I would say "The Solar Main Belt" is proper, (as would be "The Alpha Centauri Main Belt", if there is one). Anyhow, I believe it is typically not capitalized (like "the sun", which is common but definitely incorrect, I think per IAU decree). "What's in a name?" :) Wwheaton (talk) 19:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I would like to see a cite for the sentence that reads "collisions that occur at low relative speeds may also join two asteroids together." Really? Most collisions are at at least many hundreds of m/s up to typical impact speeds of 5 km/s -- does two asteroids ever join together 'softly' the way this reads?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.148.116.88 (talk) 20:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

At one point the document says that the total mass of the belt is 4% of the mass of Earth's Moon. Another point in the document says that 99.9% of the mass of the belt has been lost. A quick Google calculation yields: ((mass of the Moon * 0.04) / (1 - 0.999)) / Earth mass = 0.492125876. Therefore, the original mass of the Asteroid Belt is estimated to be half an Earth mass. Another quick Google calculation yields mass of Mars / Earth mass = 0.107446849. Now that I have established that the Asteroid Belt could have been formed from a planet-sized object, I want to attack the idea that the rocks of the belt could be formed from accretion. Ceres, the largest object inhabiting the belt, has a mass of 0.00015 times that of Earth, and a surface gravity of 0.028 m/s^2. The Earth has a surface gravity of 9.81 m/s^2, or 350 times that of Ceres. The gravity of any planet is zero at the center. We approximate the pressure at the center of Ceres (from http://physics.info/pressure/practice.shtml) with (3.0 * (((6.67E-11 N) * (m^2)) / (kg^2)) * ((9.43E20 kg)^2)) / ((8 * Pi * (487.3E3 m))^4) = 7909.06946 pascals. The document on Metamorphic rock says that 1500 bar is required to form this rock, which is the type of rock that I would expect to form from dust in space. Note that 1500 bars = 150000000 pascals, and (1500 bars) / (7909.06946 pascals) = 18965.5687, that is, the pressure at the center of Ceres is 19 thousand times too small to form rock. Therefore, it is unlikely that the Asteroid Belt was not formed from a demolished planet. QED. This article is pablum for the masses, and should be removed for being unscientific. 98.81.162.188 (talk) 03:00, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Rock is a type of material. Pressure is not required to form it it was already present in the accretion disc (actually, already in the planetary nebula). Nothing has been QED'ed by you. --JorisvS (talk) 08:28, 28 February 2014 (UTC) Rock forms under zero pressure in space? Would I then have to accept that the hand of God was at play? Or is the position that space is filled with random rock that readily collects into tight orbital planes that are separated by light-years? Please provide calculations to support your position, as words alone have zero value. 98.81.179.13 (talk) 13:34, 28 February 2014 (UTC) The early (more massive) asteroid belt was scattered and materiel eroded away by Jupiter because Jupiter is the most massive planet and accreted first. This is also the reason Mars is somewhat on the wimpy size. The average density of Ceres is only 2.1 g/cm3 and most of the heavier elements (what astronomers casually refer to as rock) will be near the core. -- Kheider (talk) 15:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC) My arguments are: the Asteroid Belt is what remains from a planet-sized object destroyed in the past the rocks and dust that constitute the Asteroid Belt were not formed in space spontaneously with near-zero-pressure. I presume rock, whether massive or miniscule, is the product of planetary accretion. Planets are the factories that produce rock from the matter stars eject. Gravity is the machinery in planets that form rock, and with little gravity - no rock forms, as the pressure threshold required to form the crystalline structure is not exceeded. The unsubstantiated proposition that the rocks in the Asteroid Belt were the product of accretion under what-amounts-to zero pressure is fallacious, and abhorrent in that it "teaches" something akin to magic. I appear to be arguing with blind consensus, and as history has repeatedly shown, consensus is the enemy of science. Dissent is the factory that produces science, and argument is the mechanism that conceives a new understanding. I see no arguments here, just parroting of past statements with no understanding what those statements mean. 98.81.167.61 (talk) 02:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC) Not rocks as in "boulders", but nano-sized particles consisting of rock. Follow that link if you don't understand this. --JorisvS (talk) 18:40, 28 February 2014 (UTC) Rock is a crystalline structure. If by "rock" you mean a loose dust pillow made of "nano-sized particles", then I think we have nothing more to discuss as you have no intellectual integrity. 98.81.167.61 (talk) 02:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC) A) Personal attacks such as that are not allowed, for good reasons. B) One can also have dust-sized particles of ices. You should review cosmic dust and interstellar cloud (look for "dust"). --JorisvS (talk) 11:24, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

The following information conflicts with more recent information as mentioned in the 298 Baptistina page: "A September 2007 study has suggested that a large-body collision undergone by the asteroid 298 Baptistina sent a number of fragments into the inner Solar System. The impacts of these fragments are believed to have created both Tycho crater on the Moon and Chicxulub crater in Mexico, the relict of the massive impact which is believed to have triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago". While the 298 Baptistina page (based on more recent research) states: "It was considered the possible source of the impactor said to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, a possibility ruled out by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer in 2011." etc.86.84.5.177 (talk) 17:27, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The earliest quote Google Books finds is Mémoires de la Société royale des sciences de Liège, 1843, which reads in part "[. ] the plane of the ecliptic and beyond Saturn or, conceivably, in the asteroid belt as suggested by Oort." But since Oort lived 1900-1992, this must be a mistake ("1943" instead of 1843).

• Robert W. Gibbes et al., Eds., Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, First Meeting, Held at Philadephia, September 1848, 1849, p. 60 (On the Zodiacs of the Asteroids): "Prof. [J. S.] Hubbard of the Washington Observatory stated to the Association that he was then engaged in computing the Zodiacs of the Asteroids. The term Zodiacs, as here applied, he defined as referring to the zone or belt within which are included all possible geocentric positions of the particular asteroid in question: and the object in thus determining these belts was to facilitate researches into the past history of these remarkable bodies since in most cases, the question of identity of a missing star, with any asteroid, may be settled at once by a simple inspection of the Zodiacs."
• Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. I, Harper & Brothers, New York (NY), 1850, p. 44: "[. ] and the regular appearance, about the 13th of November and the 11th of August, of shooting stars, which probably form part of a belt of asteroids intersecting the Earth's orbit and moving with planetary velocity" (translated from the German by E. C. Otté). The 1845 edition does not use that expression.
• Robert James Mann, A guide to the knowledge of the heavens, Jarrold, 1852, p. 171 and in the 1853 edition, p. 216: "The orbits of the asteroids are placed in a wide belt of space, extending between the extremes of [. ]"
, Vol. LVII (July-November 1854), p. 219: "For in Professor Peirce's demonstration of this hypothesis, he shows that the ring is sustained by the power of the exterior satellites and remarks that the belt of asteroids just within the powerful masses of Jupiter and Saturn is in that place where it is most nearly possible for a ring to be sustained about the Sun." The article qives its reference as Benjamin Peirce, On the constitution of Saturn's ring, Astronomical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 17-19 (16 June 1851), but that article never mentions the word "belt". However, see The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 1857 quote, below.
• Joseph Allen Galbraith and Samuel Haughton, Manual of Astronomy, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London, 1855, pp. 13-14: "In the annexed figure, which is drawn to scale, the belt of Asteroids enclosed between the orbits of Flora and Euphrosyne is represented in its true position and breadth, lying between Mars and Jupiter. [. ] There are, without doubt, many more bodies than the 33 mentioned in the Table circulating round the Sun within the limits of this belt [. ]"
• Thomas Anderson, William Jardine, John Hutton Balfour, Henry Darwin Rogers, (Eds.), The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Vol. 5 (January-April 1857), p. 191: "[Professor Peirce] then observed that the analogy between the ring of Saturn and the belt of the asteroids was worthy of notice."
• Hannah Mary Bouvier Peterson, Bouvier's Familiar Astronomy, Childs & Peterson, 1857, p. 57: "[The asteroids] are situated in a belt or zone only about nine hundred million of miles in width."
• Jacob Ennis, The Origin of the Stars, 1867, p. 292: "[The asteroids] are probably a few hundred in number, about eighty having been discovered in the last twenty years, and they are included within a belt about 150,000,000 miles broad. In view of the dimensions of the rings which formed the planets as given in the thirtieth section, we cannot suppose that a single ring occupied all the space within the asteroid belt."
• Albert Taylor Bledsoe, Editor, The Southern Review, Vol. VIII, No. 15 (July 1870), p. 165: "If this [nebular] hypothesis be true, it is at least conceivable that while in one stage of the condensation great planets should be formed, in another period there would result a multitude of small bodies similar in all respects to those which constitute the great asteroid belt".

In conclusion, the term "belt" (as a span of latitude) had long been in use to designate the zodiac (and features of Jupiter). "Asteroid belt" seems to have been used for the first time by a translator of Humboldt, in 1850, but that may be accidental (the original German text does not use the German word "gürtel" ("belt") "asteroidengürtel" appears in the 1879 edition, though). Widespread use apparently begins ca. 1851, probably under the aegis of American astronomer Benjamin Peirce, and was undoubtedly influenced by the concept of belt or ring borrowed from the nebular hypothesis. Urhixidur (talk) 17:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Digging further into German sources, G. A. Jahn, > Unterhaltungen für Dilettanten und Freunde der Astronomie, Geographie und Meteorologie, Leipzig, 1852, p. 340: "[. ] so dass man jetzt deren 20 kennt die man als Stellvertreter eines grössern Planeten zwischen der Mars und der Jupitersbahn betrachten kann obgleich sie einen so breiten Gürtel bilden dass die in der Bode schen Reihe für sie bestimmte Entfernung nicht mehr passt", which my poor German translates roughly as "[. ] so that one knows some 20 [planetoids] now, and placing them between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter forms so broad a belt that the distance determined in Bode's Law no longer has any meaning." Not very convincing, and no other German book before that date (1852) mentions "gürtel" along with "Ceres, Pallas, Vesta". Urhixidur (talk) 18:54, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The cited article about a lower limit on rotation rates (Rossi, Alessandro (May 20, 2004). "The mysteries of the asteroid rotation day". The Spaceguard Foundation. http://spaceguard.esa.int/tumblingstone/issues/current/eng/ast-day.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-09.) is no longer available online. It seems to be contradicted by this article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v386/n6621/abs/386154a0.html which states that "Moreover, our calculations suggest that the observed trend in the mean spin frequency for different classes of asteroids (2.2 d–1for C-type asteroids, 2.5 d–1 for S-type, and 4.0 d–1 for M-type) is due to increasing mean density, rather than increasing material strength." Can we find a current reference for the currently cited article, and should we include the contrary view in the article? Delrayva (talk) 04:36, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Why do the proportions of the three types of asteroids add up to about 103 percent. Rounding certainly can't be the error factor here.

C-type "more than 75 percent" S-type "17 percent" M-type "10 percent" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.121.204.129 (talk) 19:35, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Because the third number was also determined indepently, and not by substracting the first two from one hundred. --129.13.72.198 (talk) 11:49, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

"The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle."

Are dust paricles possible? I thought they´d be wiped out of the solar system by the pressure of the solar radiation. --129.13.72.198 (talk) 11:43, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

You might want to read the Collisions section. In short, it's an ongoing cycle of dust generation through collisions and loss from solar radiation.—RJH (talk) 14:39, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Someone should create a size chart like the one for the Solar System article. Start with the largest, Ceres, and end with the known smallest one. A size chart for the Centaurs would be neat too. Thank you. Chuck 17:42, 20 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Triton66 (talk • contribs)

Many asteroids are known to be partly composed of ices through their densities, notably Ceres itself. So why would it be so unexpected to find water (vapor)? Evidence of (past) water has even been found on dry Vesta. --JorisvS (talk) 15:25, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

@JorisvS - Thanks for your comments - text has been updated (after a closer look at the cited reference) as follows => The finding is unexpected because comets, not asteroids, are typically considered to "sprout jets and plumes". According to one of the scientists, "The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids."< ref name="NASA-20140122"> Harrington, J.D. (22 January 2014). "Herschel Telescope Detects Water on Dwarf Planet - Release 14-021". NASA . Retrieved 22 January 2014 . </ref> - in any case - thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 16:14, 23 January 2014 (UTC) Yes, definitely better:). Thank you. --JorisvS (talk) 16:15, 23 January 2014 (UTC) It's still a rather silly thing to say, isn't it, since comets are defined by "spouting jets and plumes"? So they're saying it's surprising that Ceres spouts jets and plumes, because only things that spout jets and plumes are usually thought to spout jets & plumes. It's a badly worded catch for a news release, not something we should be quoting. The point they're trying to make is that while some smaller, outer asteroids were known to display cometary activity, prompting the IAU in 2006 to reject the distinction between asteroid and comet by creating the category SSSB, now the largest asteroid (and a DP rather than a SSSB) has been shown to exhibit similar behaviour, blurring the lines even further. Certainly we can find a wording that isn't intellectually challenged. — kwami (talk) 21:13, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

If collisions occur "once every 10 million years", 4 billion years should see 400 collisions. That seems like a low number for the population to "bear little resemblance to the original". Login54321 (talk) 13:09, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

That's linear thinking. The collision rate was substantially higher in the past. --JorisvS (talk) 13:29, 15 June 2015 (UTC) The reference used in the article timed-out on me, but I think it is every

10 million years for each individual asteroid and different groups/families will have different rates. Hildas, such as 2483 Guinevere in a 3:2 resonance with Jupiter are generally only going to impact another asteroid when near perihelia and thus are about 3.5 times safer than MBAs that are full time residents of the main-belt. -- Kheider (talk) 16:21, 15 June 2015 (UTC) I agree, it is written to suggest 400 collisions over 4 billion years. The article is either wrong or misleading, it needs to be changed to explain this properly. Stub Mandrel (talk) 13:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

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Shouldn't it made clear how far from the sun (in km/AU) the asteroid belt is? I imagine that would be useful to most readers. —Atvelonis (talk) 19:26, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree! There's a lot of space "between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars" but I would also include the distance in miles as well. 2600:8800:784:8F00:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 18:52, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

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At what point would it make sense to split the article? I think we'd need one for asteroid belts in general (origin, composition. ) and our asteroid belt specifically (the Sol-4 belt? The Trans-Martian Belt? The Martian-Jovian Belt?). Humanity probably has enough information about asteroid belts in general now to justify a separate article, even if we haven't found any extra-solar belts yet. It wouldn't be topical to discuss, for example, how asteroid belts orbit double stars in the current article, but it is still article-worthy.

We haven't seen any asteroid belts in other systems yet. Protoplanary discs, yes. Circumstellar discs (Kuiper belts) yes. Not other asteroid belts. Serendi pod ous 10:28, 4 September 2017 (UTC) The Moon is not the only moon i am inclined to assume the local asteroid belt is not the only asteroid belt. [citation needed] Assuming Serendipodous is correct, though, here's a little "sandbox" proposed addition to the article in lieu of a separate article for asteroid belts in general: The asteroid belt in our solar system is the only one currently known to exist, although hypotheses about its formation suggest the likelihood that others exist in other star systems, and humankind merely has yet to discover those distant asteroid belts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.121.143.175 (talk) 07:33, 17 October 2017 (UTC) What would qualify one particular circumstellar disc as "an asteroid belt" and another as not one? Presumably, for the term to be useful, you'd need some definition that excludes the Kuiper belt and the similar belts discovered around other stars, not to mention things like protoplanetary gas discs. But what definition? Obviously there are rules that would work (inside the orbit of all gas giants but outside at least one rocky planet 40%+ mass in minor planets something to do with shared orbital elements, whatever), but is any such distinction well-motivated and useful? And, more to the point, is any such definition actually in use, and verifiable in reliable sources? If not, there really isn't much to say but "The term is sometimes applied in a loose way to other circumstellar discs, both real and fictional, that are in various different ways similar to the Sun's main asteroid belt." Which hardly seems like something you could write a separate article about. --157.131.246.136 (talk) 21:01, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

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This page is not detailed enough and there have been several enquiries on other pages, if anyone is willing to edit please send me a message on my talk pageGamer11166 (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2018 (UTC) This is optional and if not edited I will put it up for deletion. thank you Gamer11166 (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

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The article states M-Type asteroids are 10% of the bodies in the asteroid belt, with no attribution for that claim. Table 5 in this paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103513002923#t0025 suggests that M-type asteroids are 3% of the mass of the asteroid belt. These are measuring somewhat different things (mass vs count), so they aren't necessarily in conflict, but I'd be concerned about that 10%. The 3% should probably be added, and the 10% should at least have a citation if it stays in. Only putting this in talk though because I'm not terribly familiar with wikipedia editing/norms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.114.68.72 (talk) 17:53, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Editors please examine the missing text in the article: the unfinished sentence just above the ToC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.112.145.106 (talk) 12:52, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

In the heading chapter it is stated that "The total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 18% that of the Moon, or 22% that of Pluto, and roughly twice that of Pluto's moon Charon (whose diameter is 1200 km)." However, later in the article (under the heading "Characteristics") there's the following sentence: "The total mass of the asteroid belt is estimated to be 2.39×1021 kilograms, which is just 3% of the mass of the Moon.[56] The four largest objects, Ceres, 4 Vesta, 2 Pallas, and 10 Hygiea, account for maybe 40% of the belt's total mass, with 30% accounted for by Ceres alone.[57][5]". These can't be both true, and it appears that the latter is correct, cf. e.g. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1743921315008388 176.72.240.17 (talk) 08:01, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting it. Serendi pod ous 12:43, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

The four largest objects, Ceres, 4 Vesta, 2 Pallas, and 10 Hygiea, account for maybe 62% of the belt's total mass (9.38+2.59+2.01+0.83=14.81/23.90=0.62*100%=62%) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.120.103.204 (talk) 20:49, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Which is the farthest distance a particular distant known- identified object from the asteroid belt can get from the sun? - Astronomy

Somewhere in the Dim Outer Reaches.

For decades, we have counted nine of the largest bodies of the Solar System as planets &ndash Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Earth is third outward from the Sun. Neptune is eighth. Pluto is ninth. In 2006, Pluto was downgraded in its classification to dwarf leaving eight planets of the Solar System described as major.

The new body, known to astronomers as 2003-UB313,has been named Eris by the International Astronomical Union. The California Institute of Technology astronomer who found it, Michael Brown, says it is the tenth planet.

Eris has a moon, which has been named Dysnomia.

Dwarf planets. Eris, Pluto and the big asteroid Ceres now are referred to by the IAU as dwarf planets. Two other Solar System bodies are being considered for the the category of dwarf planets.

Ceres has been known since 1801 and is the largest of the asteroids. It was the first asteroid ever discovered. Its mass is more than one-third of all the 3,000 recorded asteroids. Ceres is about 578 miles in diameter.

Michael Brown and his fellow astronomers &ndash Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory and David Rabinowitz of Yale University &ndash used the the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego to photograph the object on October 21, 2003. The Samuel Oschin Telescope is a wide-field Schmidt telescope designed for sky surveys.

It was spotted in the photograph on January 8, 2005. The discovery was announced by the Minor Planet Center at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 29, 2005.

The astronomers have proposed to the International Astronomical Union naming the suspected planet after a creation mythology figure.Their proposed name has not been released pending a decision by the IAU.

Distance. Brown describes it as the most distant object ever found to be orbiting the Sun.

At 9.7 billion miles, Eris is three times farther from the Sun than Pluto, which averages 3.6 billion miles from the Sun.

The newly-discovered object is more distant than the mysterious planetoid Sedna discovered in 2003. Sedna is designated 2003 VB12.

It takes 560 years for the newly-discovered body to orbit the Sun. Right now, it is on the far side of the Solar System at its farthest point from Earth. In 280 years, the planet will be as close as the planet Neptune is to Earth.

It seems to be in the Kuiper Belt swarm of icy objects orbiting the Sun way beyond Neptune. Astronomers think they are remnants of ancient materials that formed the Solar System. It is 97 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun.

Calculations show the newly-discovered object to be at least the size of Pluto and probably half again as large. The body can't be more than 2,205 miles in diameter.

By comparison, Pluto is about 1410 miles in diameter, its moon Charon is about 727 miles in diameter, and Earth is 7,900 miles in diameter.

In the past, Pluto has been described by some astronomers as the largest Kuiper belt object. The new discovery would make Pluto second largest.

Composition. The surface of the discovered body seems to be mostly methane, like Pluto.

Trujillo used the near-infrared spectrograph (NIRI) on Gemini Observatory's eight-meter Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to record a spectrum of the surface of Eris on January 25, 2005.

It showed strong signatures of methane ice similar to the spectrum of Pluto.

Methane ice suggests a primitive surface unheated by the Sun since the Solar System formed 4.5 billion years ago. If Eris ever had been close to the Sun, the methane ice would have been boiled off.

The interior of the planet probably is a mix of rock and ice, like Pluto.

Previously, icy methane surfaces had been seen on Pluto and Neptune's moon Triton, but not on other Kuiper Belt objects.

Orbit. The elliptical orbit of Eris is tilted at a 45-degree angle away from orbits of the other planets.

The so-called terrestrial planets &ndash Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars &ndash are medium-sized rocky bodies.

• They are made of ice and rock.
• They travel very eccentric orbits.
• Their orbits tilt away from the rest of the planets.

For a time, the newly discovered body, which was named Sedna, was the most distant object yet found orbiting our Sun. It is two times farther from the Sun than Pluto.

By comparision, Earth is only 93 million miles from the Sun, while Pluto's average distance from the Sun is 3.6 billion miles. Sedna is 2.5 billion miles beyond Pluto.

Sedna's orbit is an extraordinarily long path around the Sun. It currently is almost 90 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. That distance is referred to as one astronomical unit (AU), so Sedna's distance is almost 90 AU.

Its elliptical path around the Sun may take it as much as ten times farther away at times. At its most distant, Sedna probably would be 84 billion miles from the Sun. That would be 900 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.

It probably takes this planetoid 10,500 years to complete one orbit around the Sun.

The discovery was announced on March 15, 2004.

Red and shiny. Sedna is red in color and very shiny. It is said to be the reddest object in the Solar System after the planet Mars.

The surface temperature on Sedna probably is about -400 degrees Fahrenheit. It would be even colder at times because it approaches the Sun only briefly during its lengthy journey around the Sun.

Astronomers had thought that, because Sedna seems to rotate more slowly than expected, it might have a natural satellite &ndash a moon &ndash orbiting it. Now they are not sure.

When they used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at Sedna, no moon could be seen, although it might have been out of sight behind Sedna.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope were able to calculate an upper limit on the size of Sedna. It seem's to be about three-quarters the diameter of Pluto, which would make Sedna about 995 miles in diameter.

Even though Sedna is smaller than Pluto, it is greater in volume than all the asteroids in the Solar System combined. On the other hand, Sedna probably amounts to only about one-third the mass of the Asteroid Belt, because it's icy rather than rocky.

The finders. Astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology led a team of astronomers that made the discovery on November 14, 2003. The official designation for the object is 2003 VB12.

The team, from the California Institute of Technology, Yale Observatory and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, used the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Mount Palomar Observatory in California. Then the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Tenagra Observatory in Arizona were used to verify the object and measure its size.

They named the object Sedna after the mythical Inuit goddess of the sea. It is said she was thrown into very cold Arctic waters by her father. Naming the faraway body Sedna seemed appropriate to its discoverers as the planetoid may be the coldest object in the Solar System.

In 2002, Brown and Trujillo found a large body and called it Quaoar. Its official scientific designation is 2002 LM60.

Quaoar is pronounced "kwa-whar."

Quaoar discoverers Brown and Trujillo named the body they found after a creation god of the Native American Tongva tribe, the original inhabitants of the Los Angeles basin.

According to legend, Quaoar "came down from heaven and, after reducing chaos to order, laid out the world on the back of seven giants. He then created the lower animals, and then mankind."

Quaoar and the other large planetoids dwell in the Kuiper Belt, an icy debris field of comet-like bodies extending billions of miles beyond the orbit of the distant planet Neptune.
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The Quaoar Story
After Quaoar was detected by a telescope on Earth as simply a dot of light, astronomers aimed the Hubble Space Telescope's powerful camera at it. Quaoar at that time became the farthest object in the Solar System ever to be resolved by a telescope.

Astronomers think Quaoar is composed mostly of ices mixed with rock, something like the makeup of a comet, although 100 million times greater in volume than an ordinary comet.

Even though Quaoar is smaller than Pluto, it is greater in volume than all the asteroids in the Solar System combined. On the other hand, Quaoar probably amounts to only about one-third the mass of the Asteroid Belt, because it's icy rather than rocky.

The discoverers. In 2002, Brown and Trujillo used the Palomar Oschin Schmidt telescope to see Quaoar as an 18.5-magnitude object creeping across the summer constellation Ophiuchus. Quaoar is less than 1/100,000 the brightness of the faintest star seen by the human eye.

Brown then made follow-up observations of the object using Hubble's new Advanced Camera for Surveys to measure the object's true angular size of 40 milliarcseconds. That corresponded with a diameter of about 800 miles.

Only the Hubble Space Telescope had the sharpness needed to resolve the disk of such a distant world. HST made possible the first-ever direct measurement of the true size of a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO).
THE FUTURE OF HUBBLE IS IN DOUBT
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The Orcus Story
Early in 2004, before Sedna, astronomers Brown, Trujillo and Rabinowitz announced they had found yet another large body using the telescope at the Palomar Observatory outside San Diego.

The mysterious object received the official scientific designation of 2004 DW. It appears to travel an elliptical orbit around the Sun, bringing it as close as 2.7 billion miles from the Sun and sending it as far out as 4.7 billion miles from the Sun. By comparison, Earth is a mere 93 million miles from the Sun.

It probably takes Orcus some 252 years to complete its orbit around the Sun.

Since 2001, Brown's team has found more than three dozen bright Kuiper Belt objects while surveying the outer range of the Solar System &ndash first with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Mountain in Southern California from Fall 2001, then with the Palomar QUEST camera from Summer 2003.

Orcus was announced in February 2004 and Sedna was announced in March 2004.
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The newfound planetoid Orcus is the 15th object larger than 300 miles in diameter to have been found in the Kuiper Belt. Sedna is the 16th.

In fact, some 800 objects have been spotted in the outer Solar System since 1992. Five of those could be larger than 600 miles in diameter.

Quaoar seems to be somewhere between 621 miles and 870 miles in diameter. By comparison, astronomers estimate that Orcus is between 522 miles and 1,118 miles in diameter. Sedna is larger at 800-1,100 miles in diameter.

That makes Orcus and Quaoar about the same size as each other, and just a bit more than half the size of Pluto, which is 1,413 miles in diameter.

Quaoar and Orcus are larger than Pluto's moon, Charon, which is 728 miles.
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By comparision, Earth is only 93 million miles from the Sun, while Pluto is 3.7 billion miles from the Sun. Sedna is 6.2 billion miles beyond Earth and 2.5 billion miles beyond Pluto.

Quaoar is roughly four billion miles away from Earth. That is more than a billion miles farther away than Pluto.

Quaoar is so far away, it takes light from the Sun five hours to reach it.

Unlike Pluto, Quaoar's orbit around the Sun is circular. In fact, even more so than most of the planetary bodies in our Solar System.

The object Orcus is 4.4 billion miles from Earth.

• There are objects orbiting the Sun beyond the planet Neptune in a formation that astronomers call the Kuiper Belt.
• Together, the numerous objects seem to form a disc or belt around the Sun.
• More than 400 of these icy objects are known, and there may be many more.
• They seem to be remnants of materials near the Sun as our Solar System formed.
• The large planetoids, such as Sedna and Quaoar, as well as comets and other smaller bodies, may be part of something astronomers call the Oort Cloud.
• The Oort Cloud may have been formed by gravity from a rogue star near the Sun in the early days of the Solar System.
• Our star may have been born into a cluster of stars, which means there would have been many stars close to the Sun back then.
• The Sun and Earth are estimated to be 4.6 billion years old.
• Sedna, Quaoar and the other large planetoids might represent the first actual detection of the previously suspected collection of icy bodies.
• The belt of objects seems to be circling the Sun in a spherical orbit that extends as far as 3 lightyears out from our star.
• That would be at the extreme edge of the Sun's gravitational influence.
• The Oort Cloud may extend out from our star as far as half the distance to the nearest star.
• Sedna is ten times closer to the Sun than the distance that had been predicted for the Oort Cloud, which raises a question of whether there is an inner and an outer Oort Cloud.
• Sometimes comets from the Oort Cloud may be pushed by passing stars into the inner area of the Solar System near Earth.

For decades we have counted nine of the largest bodies as planets &ndash Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Earth is third from the Sun. Neptune is eight. Pluto was ninth. In 2006, Pluto was downgraded in its classification leaving eight planets of the Solar System described as major. Pluto now is classified with the Kuiper Belt planetoids like Sedna, Quaoar and Orcus.

Pluto, Sedna, Quaoar and Orcus dwell in the Kuiper Belt, an icy debris field of comet-like bodies extending seven or more billion miles beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.

Overall, the Kuiper Belt is an orbital ring around the Sun. It's a dim, ancient region, far from the Sun, inhabited by small hard blobs of rock and ice. It is similar in some ways to the rocky debris found in the Asteroid Belt, which is an orbital ring between Mars and Jupiter. However, the Kuiper Belt consists of far more material than all of the asteroids together.

What's in the Kuiper Belt? Since the 1980s, hundreds of icy bodies have been detected in the Kuiper Belt. Almost all have been much smaller than Pluto.

Once its orbit is understood clearly, a small body in the Kuiper Belt is given an official number by the Minor Planet Center. Some of the objects also are given names. At least 84 objects have numbers and 19 of those have names. The names include Asbolus, Bienor, Chaos, Chariklo, Chiron, Cyllarus, Deucalion, Elatus, Huya, Hylonome, Ixion, Nessus, Okyrhoe, Pelion, Pholus, Quaoar, Rhadamanthus, Thereus, and Varuna.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) Minor Planet Center (MPC) is at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. SAO is a research institute of the Smithsonian Institution headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it and the Harvard College Observatory (HCO) form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Previous size record holders before Sedna, Quaoar and Orcus were a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) named Varuna and a different object known as 2002 AW197. Each of those are more or less 550 miles across.

When it was discovered in 2002, Varuna, was recognized as the largest body ever seen in the Kuiper Belt up to that time, other than Pluto and its moon Charon.

Sedna, Quaoar and Orcus are by far the biggest fish ever snagged by astronomers in their KBO surveys.

Astronomers believe that there are many more Kuiper Belt Objects. They suggest even larger KBOs might be uncovered in the next few years in the cold, dark, outer reaches of the Solar System. The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes are their valuable tool for observations leading to size calculations.

Hubble and Spitzer. Unlike the dimensions of other bodies derived from direct observation by Hubble, the diameter of one of these distant Kuiper Belt is deduced from measurement of an object's temperature and then calculation of its size based on assumptions about its reflectivity. That means, of course, that there is great uncertainty about the object's true size.
THE FUTURE OF HUBBLE IS IN DOUBT

When Tombaugh discovered planet number nine, Pluto, he had been searching for what he called Planet X. He continued looking out there for a tenth planet, Planet X, even after he discovered Pluto.

It wasn't realized until much later that Pluto actually was the largest of the known Kuiper Belt objects.

In fact, the concept of a Kuiper Belt wasn't imagined by astronomers until 1950. They realized something was there after comet orbits provided telltale evidence of a vast nesting ground for comets beyond Neptune.

The first recognized Kuiper Belt Objects were not discovered until the early 1990s.

Along with the roughly 10,000 small asteroids and comets counted across the Solar System to date, Pluto is one among dozens of so-called Trans-Neptunian Objects (NTOs).

NTOs bear that label because they cross the orbit of Neptune as they orbit the Sun.

The recent discoveries of large bodies in the Kuiper Belt drove astronomers to see if Pluto was not the only planet out there. They imagined more bodies larger and more distant than Pluto would be found, and they were.

Such objects are hard to find. Because the illumination of the Sun is so far away, light reflecting from them is extremely faint. Also, they have very dark surfaces reflecting very little light.

NASA fired an interplanetary probe called New Horizons toward Pluto in 2006. The spacecraft will arrive in the vicinity of Pluto about 2015. The robot explorer would swing by Pluto and then travel on out into the Kuiper Belt.

While the probe will have the capability to visit one or more Kuiper objects, some of the recently-discovered mysterious bodies probably won't be in a convenient position for a flyby. MORE ABOUT NEW HORIZONS »

• When a large object is found, the International Astronomical Union decides what it will be named officially.
• Planets, moons and minor planets are given names from Greek and Roman mythology.
• For instance, Venus was named for the Roman god of love because it was said to be the most beautiful planet. Mars was named for the Roman god of war because of its blood red color.
• If the IAU were to name 2003 VB12 something other than Sedna, it wouldn't be the first time names proposed by astronomers have been changed.
• For instance, astronomer William Herschel was court astronomer for the English king George III. In 1781, when Herschel found the planet we now know as Uranus, he tried to name it Georgian Sidus &ndash the Georgian Star &ndash after the king. Astronomers didn't like the name and the planet eventually was named after the Greek god of the sky, Uranus. The Greek name for the god was Ouranos. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus were a sequence of generations in mythology.
• Of course, there are only so many names in classical mythology, so another source of names will be needed as more minor planets, stars, asteroids and comets are found.
• There is an interest in making astronomy inclusive of more of Earth's races and cultures by using non-traditional names.
• Sedna's official number, 2003 VB12, was composed from the discovery year, month and date.

While Quaoar is beyond the farthest known planets, some 95 percent of all known minor planets are closer in an orbit known as the Asteroid Belt, which lies between the orbits of the major planets Mars and Jupiter.

Large planetesimals were created as the new Sun's heat acted on nearby metal grains and chunks of rock during formation of the Solar System.

The new planetesimals were tiny worlds, up to 60 miles in diameter. Over time, some collided and stuck together. Over hundreds of million years, the planetesimals smashed into each other as well as the major planets. Some would have been deflected, even out of the Solar System.

Looking through telescopes at sunlight reflected from minor planets, astronomers say there may be more than 100,000, but only 10,000 small asteroids and comets have been catalogued so far. The 3,000 or so small bodies known as asteroids probably are not the remains of an exploded planet as, together, they total only about four-ten thousandths of the mass of Earth. More likely, they are debris from collisions of many small bodies at the time the Solar System was forming around 4.6 billion years ago.
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THE METAL WORLD OF 16 PSYCHE

16 Psyche is located in the large asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and may have started as a planet, before it was partially destroyed during the formation of the solar system.

Now, it is a 130 mile (200km) wide chunk of metal, made up of iron, nickel and a number of other rare metals, including gold, platinum and copper.

As such, it offers a unique look into the violent collisions that created Earth and the terrestrial planets.

The mission team seeks to determine whether Psyche is the core of an early planet, how old it is, whether it formed in similar ways to Earth's core, and what its surface is like.

The spacecraft's instrument payload will include magnetometers, multispectral imagers, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer.

Are there planets in the Oort cloud?

There are many speculations about planet X and other possible planets or dwarf planets past the orbit of Neptune or trans-Neptunian objects. So far we have discovered many such objects, which mostly are large asteroids. But some of them can be classified as dwarf planets.

One such object is Sedna which is currently classified as planetoid and a candidate for a dwarf planet status in the inner Oort cloud. It has an extremely long and elongated orbit, taking approximately 11,400 years to complete a full orbit around the Sun.

At present, it is actually quite close (85 AU) to the Sun, which is probably the only reason we have discovered it at all. At its closest Sedna is 76 AU away and at its farthest point, it is a whopping 937 AU away or 31 times Neptune’s distance.

Sedna is not alone and astronomers have discovered other trans-Neptunian objects which are classified as planetoids and/or dwarf planets. Eris, Haumea, and Makemake are currently the most scientifically important trans-Neptunian objects found to date with Sedna taking the crown as the most distant known object in the Solar system other than long-period comets which can take millions of years to make a full orbit around the Sun.

Not a lot is known about the outer Oort cloud and it is even harder to detect objects this far away. Although it is not entirely out of the realm of possibilities to have a small planetoid orbiting Sun at the inner edge of the outer Oort cloud, it is highly unlikely it would have formed further away.

The matter is way too scarce and scattered all around for planetoids to be formed. There is one way a small planetoid or dwarf planet could be orbiting in the Oort cloud and that is an ejected planet or moon from the inner Solar system.

This is one of the theories proposed by the astronomers in relation to the mysterious, evasive, and yet to be discovered 9 th planet. Scientists believe that beyond the orbit of Neptune there is a 9 th planet that has big enough gravity to disrupt the orbits of comets and asteroids.

We found at least 10 Websites Listing below when search with asteroid belt distance from sun on Search Engine

How Far Is The Asteroid Belt From The Sun

• The distance of an asteroid from the Sun (its semi-major axis) depends upon its distribution into one of three different zones based on the Belt’s “Kirkwood Gaps”
• Zone I lies between the 4:1 resonance and 3:1 resonance Kirkwood gaps, which are roughly 2.06 and 2.5 AUs (3 to 3.74 billion km 1.86 to 2.3 billion mi) from the Sun, respectively.

How Far is the Asteroid Belt from the Sun

The Asteroid Belt, which rests between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, orbits our Sun at a distance of 3.2 to 4.2 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun

Asteroid belt distance from sun

• Asteroid belt distance from sun In the 18th century, observations made from all known planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) led astronomers to discern a pattern in their orbits
• Eventually, this led to the Titius-Bode Act, which predicted the amount of space between the planets.

In Depth 16 Psyche – NASA Solar System Exploration

• One of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt, 16 Psyche is a giant metal asteroid, about three times farther away from the Sun than is the Earth
• Its average diameter is about 140 miles (226 kilometers) – about one-sixteenth the diameter of Earth’s Moon or about the distance between Los Angeles and San Diego.

List of near-Earth asteroids by distance from Sun

104 rows · This list contains many notable Near-Earth asteroids organised by their average distance

What is the distance between the asteroid belt and the sun

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Asteroid belt stretches from 2.2 AU to 3.2 AU from Sun It is 329115316 to9 478713186 kilometers from Sun 204502383miles to 297450012 miles.

Educator Guide: Solar System Bead Activity NASA/JPL Edu

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• Students will construct a distance model of the solar system to scale, using colored beads as planets
• The chart below shows the planets and asteroid belt in order, along with their distance from the sun in astronomical units.

Which is the farthest distance a particular distant known

• That places it between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun
• But asteroids from the asteroid Velt like Pallas and Hygiea have an aphelion of 3.4119 AU and 3.5024 AU respectively
• So my question is, which is the farthest distance a particular distant known-identified object from the asteroid belt can get from the sun?

How Far is the Asteroid Belt from Earth

• The distance between the Asteroid Belt and Earth varies considerably depending on where we measure to
• Based on its average distance from the Sun, the distance

Planetary Size and Distance Comparison National

• The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, separating the inner and outer planets
• Relative size means how big the planets are when compared to each other and the sun
• Relative distance means how far apart the planets are when compared to each other and the sun.

12 Asteroid Belt Facts Location, Distance & More

• The Asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter
• It is more than two and a half times the distance as the Earth is from the Sun, making it between 205 and 297 million miles (2.2 AU to 3.2 AU from the Sun itself, being approximately 93 million miles thick (1 AU)
• It is filled with millions of asteroids, making it the subject of great

What is the approximate distance from the sun to the

• Correct answers: 1 question: What is the approximate distance from the sun to the asteroid belt? 1
• 1103 million km Brainliest if your correct.

Asteroid belt :Facts,definition, location,size, mass and

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• It is located in between the Mars and Jupiter
• Furthermore, it is ranges between 2.5 AU to 4 AU distance from the Sun
• It means that Asteroid belt makes their orbit in between 3.74X10^8 Km and 5.98X10^8 Km from the Sun.

Closest and Farthest Distance of Planets from Sun

• Pluto used to be the 9th planet of our solar system
• Now it is a dwarf planet since 2006
• It is the largest dwarf planet in our solar system, located in the Kuiper belt region.
• These were the 8 planets of our solar system and their closest and farthest distance from the sun
• Also, the average/mean distance of each planet from the sun is given including dwarf planet Pluto.

Asteroid belt Facts and all other Information : Planets

• The asteroid belt is located in the inner solar system region between the orbits of planet Mars and Jupiter
• This belt looks like a torus-shaped structure, extending from 2.2 AU to 3.2 AU from the sun
• (1 AU is almost 150 million km and is the distance between the sun and earth)
• The thickness of the main-belt structure

Asteroid Belt: All What You Need To Know About Asteroid Belt

• Located at around 2.5 AU away from the Sun, or 2.5 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, lies the famous asteroid belt
• It is a region of space filled with bits and pieces of rock left over from the early stages of the solar system[].Many of these objects are also called planetoids, and they orbit between Mars and Jupiter in a pack known as the Main Asteroid Belt.

Asteroid belt National Aeronautics and Space

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• The temperature of the asteroid belt varies with the distance from the Sun
• For dust particles within the belt, typical temperatures range from 200 K (−73 °C) at 2.2 AU down to 165 K (−108 °C) at 3.2 AU [60] However, due to rotation, the surface temperature of an asteroid can vary considerably as the sides are alternately exposed to solar

This failed planet is slowly rusting in space Live Science

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• Roughly two to three times Earth's distance from the sun, in the Asteroid Belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, 16 Psyche makes its home
• This giant metal asteroid is …

How far is the asteroid belt from the sun

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Mars is located 227.9x106km (or 1.52AU) from the sun, and the asteroid belt is located 300-600x106km (or 2-4AU) from the sun.

43 examples of Asteroids in our universe – LORECENTRAL

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• Hathor (asteroid Aton: sun distance less than 1 AU)
• Hermes (also called 1937 UB) (Apollo asteroid: distance of the sun greater than 1 AU, and crosses Earth’s orbit) Discovered in 1937
• Hygieia (main belt asteroid) Discovered in 1849

Solar System Scale Model Calculator

• Calculate the scaled planet diameters and planet-sun distances for a solar system model
• Enter scale or diameter or distance, select to show table and/or map below, select options, then press Calculate
• Examples: Scale 1 : 100000000 or Sun Diameter = 10 cm or Neptune Distance from Sun = 1000 ft.

List from Sun, all planets, asteroid belt, comet Chegg.com

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• Transcribed image text: List from Sun, all planets, asteroid belt, comet belt, comet cloud in the order of their distance to the Sun: For the toolbar, press ALT+F10 (PC) or ALT+FN+F10 (Mac)
• BI V Paragraph Arial 14px < . > 111 < A < Р QUESTION 2 Matching each planet with the correct distance to the Sun in AU unit Earth A

How long does it take to get the asteroid belt

• The distance between the Asteroid Belt and Earth varies considerably depending on where we measure to
• Based on its average distance from the Sun, the distance between Earth and the edge of the Belt that is closest to it can be said to be between 1.2 to 2.2 AUs, or 179.5 and 329 million km (111.5 and 204.43 million mi).

How Big Is Space – Interactive version

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• The largest asteroid in our Solar System at 945km across
• Sun (Cassini's Estimate) 140,000,000km
• Giovanni Cassini's 1672 estimate of distance

Dwarf planet Definition, Characteristics, & Facts

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• Mean distance from Sun (AU) orbital period (years) diameter (km) year of discovery notable features Official dwarf planets* *As defined by the International Astronomical Union
• Ceres: 2.77 4.61 980 × 910 1801 largest known asteroid first asteroid discovered Pluto: 39.5

What is the distance from Mars to the asteroid belt

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• The orbit of Mars is about 1.5 AU from the Sun on average, with the asteroid belt starting about 2 AU from the Sun
• This means that the closest Mars

Solar System Test Review- 2nd Hour Science

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• The absolute magnitude of a star measure both luminosity and the stars distance from Earth
• Since the sun uses its own hydrogen to create energy, it will eventually run out of fuel and burn out
• Most asteroids are found in the asteroid belt between Earth and Mars.

How to determine the orbital period of an asteroid using

• According to the third law of Kepler the farther a planet if from the Sun the longer is its orbital period
• Because the distance from the Sun to earth is $149 imes 10^6$ km and it takes a year for earth to complete the rotation then for the asteroid it would take 3 years.
• I tried to actually calculate how much time would take for the asteroid to complete one rotation combining Newton's law

Bode's Law: was discredited only a few years after its

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User: In scientific notation, 330 is written: 3.3 x (102) 33 x (102) 3.3 x (103) 3.3 x (104) User: Bode's Law: was discredited only a few years after its creation uses a number sequence to determine the distance of planets correctly predicted the distance of Neptune from the sun fell apart when an asteroid belt was discovered between Mars and Jupiter

Which is the farthest distance a particular distant known- identified object from the asteroid belt can get from the sun? - Astronomy

In the distant past, people were both awed and alarmed by comets, perceiving them as long-haired stars that appeared in the sky unannounced and unpredictably. Chinese astronomers kept extensive records for centuries, including illustrations of characteristic types of comet tails, times of cometary appearances and disappearances, and celestial positions. These historic comet annals have proven to be a valuable resource for later astronomers.

We now know that comets are leftovers from the dawn of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago, and consist mostly of ice coated with dark organic material. They have been referred to as "dirty snowballs." They may yield important clues about the formation of our solar system. Comets may have brought water and organic compounds, the building blocks of life, to the early Earth and other parts of the solar system.

As theorized by astronomer Gerard Kuiper in 1951, a disc-like belt of icy bodies exists beyond Neptune, where a population of dark comets orbits the sun in the realm of Pluto. These icy objects, occasionally pushed by gravity into orbits bringing them closer to the sun, become the so-called short-period comets. Taking less than 200 years to orbit the sun, in many cases their appearance is predictable because they have passed by before. Less predictable are long-period comets, many of which arrive from a region called the Oort Cloud about 100,000 astronomical units (that is, 100,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun) from the Sun. These Oort Cloud comets can take as long as 30 million years to complete one trip around the Sun.

Each comet has a tiny frozen part, called a nucleus, often no larger than a few kilometers across. The nucleus contains icy chunks, frozen gases with bits of embedded dust. A comet warms up as it nears the Sun and develops an atmosphere, or coma. The sun's heat causes the comet's ices to change to gases so the coma gets larger. The coma may extend hundreds of thousands of kilometers. The pressure of sunlight and high-speed solar particles (solar wind) can blow the coma dust and gas away from the Sun, sometimes forming a long, bright tail. Comets actually have two tails - a dust tail and an ion (gas) tail.

Most comets travel a safe distance from the sun - comet Halley comes no closer than 89 million kilometers (55 million miles). However, some comets, called sungrazers, crash straight into the Sun or get so close that they break up and evaporate.

Scientists have long wanted to study comets in some detail, tantalized by the few 1986 images of comet Halley's nucleus. NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft flew by comet Borrelly in 2001 and photographed its nucleus, which is about 8 kilometers (5 miles) long.

NASA's Stardust mission successfully flew within 236 kilometers (147 miles) of the nucleus of Comet Wild 2 in January 2004, collecting cometary particles and interstellar dust for a sample return to Earth in 2006. The photographs taken during this close flyby of a comet nucleus show jets of dust and a rugged, textured surface. Analysis of the Stardust samples suggests that comets may be more complex than originally thought. Minerals formed near the Sun or other stars were found in the samples, suggesting that materials from the inner regions of the solar system traveled to the outer regions where comets formed.

Another NASA mission, Deep Impact, consisted of a flyby spacecraft and an impactor. In July 2005, the impactor was released into the path of the nucleus of comet Tempel 1 in a planned collision, which vaporized the impactor and ejected massive amounts of fine, powdery material from beneath the comet's surface. En route to impact, the impactor camera imaged the comet in increasing detail. Two cameras and a spectrometer on the flyby spacecraft recorded the dramatic excavation that helped determine the interior composition and structure of the nucleus.

After their successful primary missions, the Deep Impact spacecraft and the Stardust spacecraft were still healthy and were retargeted for additional cometary flybys. Deep Impact's mission, EPOXI (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation), comprised two projects: the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI), which encountered comet Hartley 2 in November 2010, and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh) investigation, which searched for Earth-size planets around other stars on route to Hartley 2. NASA returned to comet Tempel 1 in 2011, when the Stardust New Exploration of Tempel 1 (NExT) mission observed changes in the nucleus since Deep Impact's 2005 encounter.

How Comets Get Their Names

Comet naming can be complicated. Comets are generally named for their discoverer -- either a person or a spacecraft. This International Astronomical Union guideline was developed only in the last century. For example, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was so named because it was the ninth short-periodic comet discovered by Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. Since spacecraft are very effective at spotting comets many comets have LINEAR, SOHO or WISE in their names.

Comets: Significant Dates

• 1070-1080: The comet later designated Halley's Comet is pictured in the Bayeux Tapestry, which chronicles the Battle of Hastings of 1066.
• 1449-1450: Astronomers make one of the first known efforts to record the paths of comets across the night sky.
• 1705: Edmond Halley determines that the comets of 1531, 1607 and 1682 are the same comet and predicts its return in 1758. The comet arrives on schedule and is later named Halley's Comet.
• 1986: An international fleet of five spacecraft converges on comet Halley as it makes its regular (about every 76 years) pass through the inner solar system.
• 1994: In the first observed planetary impact by a comet, awed scientists watch as fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smash into Jupiter's atmosphere.
• 2001: Deep Space 1 flies by and photographs comet Borrelly.
• 2004: NASA's Stardust spacecraft collects dust samples from comet Wild 2 and images the nucleus.
• 2005: The Deep Impact impactor collides with comet Tempel 1 to reveal the interior of the nucleus.
• 2006: The Stardust sample return capsule lands in Utah carrying cometary particles and interstellar dust.
• 2009: Scientists announce that the amino acid glycine, a building block of life, was collected by the Stardust spacecraft from comet Wild 2.
• 2010: The Deep Impact spacecraft studies its second cometary target, Hartley 2, a small, hyperactive comet.
• 2011: The Stardust spacecraft encounters Tempel 1 and captures views of the Deep Impact impact site, the opposite side of the nucleus, and evolution on the comet's surface.

Comets: Trivia

Survivor
Sungrazer comets are comets that come so close to the sun that they vaporize and disappear -- never to be seen again. However, in December of 2011 one comet (Lovejoy) was the first spacecraft-viewed comet to graze the sun and survive to tell the tale.

Hang On
If you weigh 45 kg (100 lb.) on Earth, you'd weigh only about 0.005 kg (0.01 lb.) on a comet. At that weight, you could easily jump right off into space (although we don't recommend it ). If you rode on a comet close to the sun, you'd probably get blown off into space on a jet of dust and gas.

Darkest
A comet's nucleus is very dark -- as dark as coal or asphalt, which are some of the darkest materials on Earth. This makes a comet's nucleus one of the darkest things in our solar system.

Small Town / Big State
The size of a comet is no small matter: Did you know that the average size of a comet is as big as an entire town? Now, imagine a comet as an average town and the Kuiper Belt (where comets reside and come from) as a state, but this state would be gigantic. The Kuiper Belt expands from about 30 to 55 AU, which is about 3.7 billion km (2.3 billion miles) long. The circumference of the entire Earth is only about 40 thousand km (25 thousand miles).

Killer Comet?
Were the dinosaurs wiped out by a comet impact 65 million years ago? It's possible. In the earliest days of the solar system, comets regularly bombarded the planets.

One Tough Robot
No one expected Europe's Giotto spacecraft to survive the beating it took from dust and rocks when it made a close pass by comet Halley in 1986. Damaged, but far from dead, Giotto flew on to study a second comet.

Swell Comet
When they are far from the sun, most comets are insignificant specks less than 10 km (6 miles) across. But when a comet gets close to the sun, the cloud of gases surrounding it can swell larger than the size of Jupiter -- more than 10 times the diameter of Earth. Comets also sprout beautiful tails that stretch for millions of kilometers away from the sun.

Thar She Blows
Comet Hale-Bopp spewed out about 250 tons of gas and dust per second -- more than 50 times what most other comets churn out. It made for a spectacular show as it passed through the inner solar system in 1997.

Don't Wait Up
Comet Hale-Bopp won't return to our skies for about 2,740 years -- and that's not even close to the longest orbit comets make around our sun. Some far travelers take millions of years to make one orbit. Others, such as comet Encke, run by the sun every few years.

Comet Collision
Creating space fireworks just in time for the Fourth of July (2005), Deep Impact flew by and sent an impactor into the path of the nucleus of comet Tempel 1. Deep Impact was the first mission to collide with and eject material from a comet.

The Planets in Order

Now, let us take a more detailed look at these 8 planets in order of their distance from the sun (Pluto we miss you!) which make up our solar system.

1. Mercury

This is the planet which bears the brunt of the Sun’s heat. It is located just 58 million km or 0.39 AU (Astronomical Units) away from the Sun. That’s pretty close, considering the overall size of the universe. Even though Mercury comes first in line, it is actually not the hottest planet of the Solar System.

Well, this is because it has no atmosphere at all. The absence of atmosphere means that it cannot trap heat and thus it doesn’t get that hot. Mercury also holds the title of being the smallest planet in our solar system. In fact, it is even smaller than the largest moon of the solar system, Ganymede ( pretty Geeky, right? ) which orbits Jupiter. Strangely, Mercury doesn’t have any moon of its own.

2. Venus

Venus is the second in line and the hottest of all. It is located around 108 million km or 0.72 AU away from the Sun. It owes its hot nature to a thick atmosphere and proximity to the Sun. Temperatures here can reach up to a scorching 735K.

Venus is often called a “Sister Planet” to the Earth because of it being really close in size to the Earth. Just like Mercury, Venus also has no moons. It spins in the opposite direction as compared to other planets, meaning that the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East here. Since it is brighter than any other object in the morning and evening sky, it is also called “Morning Star” or “Evening Star”.

3. Earth

Here comes our “Mother Earth”. Our home since time immemorial, and the only known planet to support life, Earth lies 3rd from the Sun. Located at a distance of 130 million km or 1 AU from the Sun, it contains all the necessary conditions vital for supporting life.

Earth as said before is a terrestrial planet whose surface keeps on changing. Around 70% of the total area of the planet is covered with water. Earth has one moon which is in constant revolution around it. Its atmosphere is made up of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen and 1% other gases. This atmosphere is also responsible for protecting the surface of the Earth from harmful radiations and various other things.

4. Mars

Located at a distance of 228 million km or 1.52 AU, it is the 4th planet in the Solar System. It is also called the “Red Planet” as the iron oxide present on its surface imparts it a reddish hue. It is the most similar planet to our Earth in the whole solar system, due to similar rotation, tilt and seasonal cycles. This is the prime reason why most of the research involving finding other planets suitable for life is concentrated on Mars.

It has a thin atmosphere and consists of two moons revolving around it, Phobos and Deimos.

5. Jupiter

The 5th planet from the Sun and the most massive one, Jupiter is 317 times the mass of Earth. Located at a distance of 778 million km or 5.2 AU, it is two and half times larger than all other planets of the solar system combined. It is basically a giant ball of gas, Hydrogen and Helium being the primary components along with other trace components.

It contains an astounding 67 moons, which makes it a mini world solar system in itself. Ganymede, the largest moon of the Solar System also revolves around this planet.

6. Saturn

Saturn is located at a distance of 1.4 billion km or 9.5 AU from the Sun. It is also a Gas Giant with a solid core, and perhaps the easiest one to identify. It consists of a meticulous system of 7 rings surrounding it with gaps in between. Saturn’s atmospheres is mainly made up of Hydrogen and Helium and it consists of 53 known moons.

7. Uranus

This is the 7th planet in our solar system and is located at a distance of 2.9 billion km or 19.19 AU from the Sun. It is most popularly referred to as the “Ice Giant” due to the presence of Ammonia, Methane, Water and various other hydrocarbons in ice form. This is also one of the reasons for it being the coldest planet of the Solar System.

Uranus has a nice bluish appearance and has 27 moons, which orbit Neptune’s equator. It also has faint inner narrow rings and dark, brightly coloured outer ones.

8. Neptune

Located at a distance of 4.5 billion km or 30.07 AU, Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun. It is classified as an “Ice Giant” along with Uranus and is made up of gas. It is quite similar to Uranus as it contains methane ice and a system of faint inner and outer rings. Neptune was the first planet to predicted to exist by using Maths and consists of 13 moons and 6 rings.

Well if you didn’t before, now you know what are the various planets in order of their distance from the Sun. After all, our universe is an extremely intriguing thing and learning about it can be really fun. So keep your search running and mind exploring the farthest reaches of space.