Interesting facts about asteroids

in #science7 years ago
  • Ceres is the largest known asteroids with a diameter of approximately 950 km. This asteroid is so large that it can be classified as a dwarf planet.

  • Asteroids are too small to have a spherical shape, which is formed by cosmic bodies under the influence of gravity. Therefore, asteroids, as a rule, are ellipsoids, dumbbells or even take a strange shape.

38471326.jpg

  • Asteroids rarely have a single structure. More often they are more like piles of rubble, held together by their common weight.

  • Most asteroids have either a rocky composition, or a metallic one. Metal asteroids are heavier and they have more chances to pass the Earth's atmosphere without any obstacles and land. Stony asteroids, as a rule, burn in the atmosphere or, if they are very large, explode closer to the surface.

  • The asteroid, which entered the atmosphere of the Earth, is called a meteor, which fell to the Earth - a meteorite.

post-650x458.jpg

  • If you combine all asteroids in the Asteroid Belt, they form a cosmic body less than 1500 km in diameter, which is less than half of the Moon.

  • The name of an asteroid can only be obtained after its orbit has been calculated more or less accurately. There are times when an asteroid gets a name only a few decades after its discovery.

  • Asteroids of more than 10 km across can represent a global hazard. All asteroids of this size are known to astronomers and are in orbits that can not lead to a collision with the Earth.

Sort:  

We should all be grateful that these asteroids you mentioned at the very end cannot collide with the earth. Thank God for Jupiter!