What is an Asteroid?
| Asteroids are in fact miniature planets in our own Solar
System. They have their own orbits around the Sun and they rotate on their
axis just like the Earth, this takes between 5 and 20Ýhours no matter how
big or small the asteroid is.ÝÝ
All asteroids are not the same, they are, roughly the
same shape (the larger ones are like a stretched out ball because they
have their own gravity, just like the Earth) as other asteroids of the
same size but they are made up of different things. This difference allows
us to divide them up into different groups depending on what they are made
of. Sometimes an asteroid, just like the Earth, can have it's own satellite circling it. These are known as binary asteroids. At one time it was believed that asteroids were what was
left of a planet which was destroyed. This is no longer believed to be
true. It is now thought that the are like space junk, they are made of
all the material in our solar system that was left over when the planets
formed, besides there isn't even enough material in all the asteroids put
together to equal the moon. But a law called Bode's Law did predict that
there would be something where the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
is.
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