The Asteroid Belt and Near-Earth Objects

Asteroids

Asteroids

These are big rocks that circle the Sun.

Asteroid Belt

The vast majority of asteroids are safely beyond the orbit of Mars in an area.

Ceres

Asteroids range in size from ____, which is 587 miles across, and are merely asteroidal fragments.

Asteroidal meteoroids

These are made of rock and/or iron; when they fall to Earth, they’re called meteorites.

Jupiter Trojans

Asteroids that are trapped in Jupiter’s orbit around the sun.

Ceres

Pallas

Vesta

Hyglea

The “Big Four” of the Asteroid Belt

Ahuna Mons

a mountain on Ceres 11 miles wide ad 2.5 miles high, is a cryovolcano.

Rheasilvia

It is 310 miles wide and about 12 miles deep, with a central peak higher than the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii.

Occator

Unusual bright white spots appear on the floor of Ceres’ ____ crater.

Near-Earth objects (NEOs)

Thousands of small asteroids have orbits that cross or approach Earth's orbit.

Minor Planet Center (MPC)

The ________ of the International Astronomical Union keeps tabs on PHAs, and several observatories sweep the skies to discover more of them.

Chicxulub crater

The 110-mile-wide geologic feature, which lies partially on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and partially offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, may be the last remaining sign of the impact that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs.

Flagstaff

An impact by a small asteroid caused the famous Meteor Crater in northern Arizona, near ____

Gravity Tractor

A massive spacecraft would fly along with the asteroid for a period of years.

Occultation

A kind of eclipse that occurs when a moving body in the solar system passes in front of a star.

Binary System

Two stars in orbit around a common center of mass.

Occultation Ground Track

An area of the Earth's surface that is expected to be visible for the occultation, similar to the path of totality during a solar eclipse.

International Occultation and Timing Association (IOTA)

They tells all you want to know about observing occultations.

potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs)

NEOs are what the astronomers see as the Earth’s neighbors and most of them are identified as _____.

Vesta

It is a surviving example of a protoplanet, which is a stage in the formation of a planet that is just before the formation of a planet.