Science Fact Finder | Space - Where Are Asteroids Found?

Where are asteroids found?

Asteroids, also called "minor planets," are rocky chunks of matter in orbit around the sun. They are smaller than any of the nine major planets and they are not moons of any major planet. Some asteroids are as small as 0.62 miles (1 kilometer) in diameter. The term asteroid means "starlike" because asteroids appear as points of light when seen through a telescope.

Most asteroids are located in belts that lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, at a distance of 2.1 to 3.3 AUs from the sun. (An AU is an astronomical unit, the distance between the Earth and sun, about 92 million miles.) Other asteroids, called Trojan asteroids, exist in two clusters, one on either side of Jupiter. And the Apollo asteroids cross Earth's orbit, sometimes even coming closer than the moon. There is yet another group of asteroids that crosses the orbits of several planets.

Ceres, the first asteroid to be...

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