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Asteroid Belt

Lesson 3

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Asteroid Belt

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What is an Asteroid Belt?

  • The asteroid belt is a region of our solar system

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  • The Asteroid Belt is located between Jupiter and Mars

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  • There are thousands of asteroids orbiting the sun in this belt

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WHERE?

ORBIT OF MARS

ORBIT OF JUPITER

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Ceres

  • The largest of these asteroids is the dwarf planet Ceres
  • It measures more than 1000 km across

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What is an Asteroid?

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  • Asteroids are essentially bits and pieces of space dirt that did not form into planets
  • They are large objects however not large enough to be considered planets
  • Their shapes are irregular
    • Most of them were formed from either:
      • being broken apart from other larger asteroids
      • merged together through light contact

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Asteroids

  • Not all asteroids in space are part of the asteroid belt
  • There are also random ones that have their own unique orbit

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Asteroids

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