asteroid

—asteroidal, adj.

/as"teuh royd'/, n.

1. Also called minor planet. Astron. any of the thousands of small bodies of from 480 miles (775 km) to less than one mile (1.6 km) in diameter that revolve about the sun in orbits lying mostly between those of Mars and Jupiter.

2. Zool. an asteroidean; a starfish.

adj.

3. starlike.

[1795-1805; < Gk asteroeidés starry, starlike. See ASTERISK, -OID]

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Any of the many small rocky objects found mainly in a flat ring, or belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

It is thought that the gravitational influence of what became Jupiter kept the asteroids from aggregating into a single planet while the solar system was forming. Also called minor planets, asteroids are smaller than any of the nine major planets; only about 30 are more than 125 mi (200 km) across. Ceres is the largest known asteroid. Millions of boulder-sized asteroidal fragments are thought to exist in the solar system. Asteroids or their fragments regularly strike Earth, plunging through the atmosphere as meteors to reach its surface (see meteorite). Asteroids appear to be composed of carbonaceous, stony, and metallic (mainly iron) materials. See also Earth-crossing asteroid; Trojan asteroids.

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▪ astronomy

Introduction

also called  minor planet  or  planetoid  

  any of a host of rocky small bodies (small body), about 1,000 km (600 miles) or less in diameter, that orbit the Sun primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in a nearly flat ring called the asteroid belt. It is because of their small size and large numbers relative to the major planets that asteroids are also called minor planets. The two designations have been used interchangeably, though the term asteroid is more widely recognized by the general public. Among scientists, those who study individual objects with dynamically interesting orbits or groups of objects with similar orbital characteristics generally use the term minor planet, whereas those who study the physical properties of such objects usually refer to them as asteroids. The distinction between asteroids and meteoroids (meteor and meteoroid) having the same origin is culturally imposed and is basically one of size. Asteroids that are approximately house-sized (a few tens of metres across) and smaller are often called meteoroids, though the choice may depend somewhat on context—for example, whether they are considered objects orbiting in space (asteroids) or objects having the potential to collide with a planet, natural satellite, or other comparatively large body or with a spacecraft (meteoroids).

Major milestones in asteroid research

Early discoveries

      The first asteroid was discovered on Jan. 1, 1801, by the astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (Piazzi, Giuseppe) at Palermo, Italy. At first Piazzi thought that he had discovered a comet; however, after the orbital elements of the object had been computed, it became clear that the object moved in a planetlike orbit between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Owing to illness, Piazzi was able to observe the object only until February 11, and, as no one else was aware of its existence, it was not reobserved before it moved into the daytime sky. The short arc of observations did not allow computation of an orbit of sufficient accuracy to predict where the object would reappear when it moved back into the night sky, and so it was “lost.”

      There matters might have stood were it not for the fact that this object was located at the heliocentric distance predicted by Bode's law of planetary distances proposed in 1766 by the German astronomer Johann D. Titius (Titius, Johann Daniel) and popularized by his compatriot Johann E. Bode (Bode, Johann Elert), who used the scheme to advance the notion of a “missing” planet between Mars and Jupiter. The discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781 by the British astronomer William Herschel (Herschel, Sir William) at a distance that closely fit the distance predicted by Bode's law was taken as strong evidence of its correctness. Some astronomers were so convinced that they agreed during an astronomical conference in 1796 to undertake a systematic search. Ironically, Piazzi was not a party to this attempt to locate the missing planet. Nonetheless, Bode and others, on the basis of the preliminary orbit, believed that Piazzi had found and then lost it. This led the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (Gauss, Carl Friedrich) to develop in 1801 a method for computing the orbit of an asteroid from only a few observations, a technique that has not been significantly improved since. Using Gauss's predictions, the German Hungarian astronomer Franz von Zach (Zach, Franz Xaver, Freiherr von) rediscovered Piazzi's object on Jan. 1, 1802. Piazzi named this object Ceres after the ancient Roman grain goddess and patron goddess of Sicily, thereby initiating a tradition that continues to the present day: asteroids are named by their discoverers (in contrast to comets, which are named for their discoverers).

      The discovery of three more faint objects (i.e., faint compared with Mars and Jupiter) in similar orbits over the next six years— Pallas, Juno, and Vesta—complicated this elegant solution to the missing-planet problem and gave rise to the surprisingly long-lived though no longer accepted idea that the asteroids were remnants of a planet that had exploded.

      Following this flurry of activity, the search for the planet appears to have been abandoned until 1830, when Karl L. Hencke (Hencke, Karl Ludwig) renewed it. In 1845 he discovered a fifth asteroid, which he named Astraea.

      There were 88 known asteroids by 1866, when the next major discovery was made: Daniel Kirkwood, an American astronomer, noted that there were gaps (Kirkwood gaps) (now known as Kirkwood gaps) in the distribution of asteroid distances from the Sun (see below Distribution and Kirkwood gaps (asteroid)). The introduction of photography (photography, history of) to the search for new asteroids in 1891, by which time 322 asteroids had been identified, accelerated the discovery rate. The asteroid designated (323) Brucia, detected in 1891, was the first to be discovered by means of photography. By the end of the 19th century, 464 had been found; this grew to more than 100,000 by the end of the 20th century and to more than triple that number by the middle of the next decade. This explosive growth was a spin-off of a survey designed to find 90 percent of asteroids with diameters greater than 1 km that can cross Earth's orbit and thus have the potential to collide with the planet (see below Near-Earth asteroids (asteroid)).

Later advances

      In 1918 the Japanese astronomer Hirayama Kiyotsugu recognized clustering in three of the orbital elements (semimajor axis, eccentricity, and inclination) of various asteroids. He speculated that objects sharing these elements had been formed by explosions of larger parent asteroids, and he called such groups of asteroids “families.”

      In the mid-20th century, astronomers began to consider the idea that, during the formation of the solar system, Jupiter was responsible for interrupting the accretion of a planet from a swarm of planetesimals located about 2.8 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun; for elaboration of this idea, see below Origin and evolution of the asteroids (asteroid). (One astronomical unit is the average distance from Earth to the Sun—about 150 million km [93 million miles].) About the same time, calculations of the lifetimes of asteroids whose orbits passed close to those of the major planets showed that most such asteroids were destined either to collide with a planet or to be ejected from the solar system on timescales of a few hundred thousand to a few million years. Since the age of the solar system is approximately 4.6 billion years, this meant that the asteroids seen today in such orbits must have entered them recently and implied that there was a source for these asteroids. At first this source was thought to be comets that had been captured by the planets and that had lost their volatile material through repeated passages inside the orbit of Mars. It is now known that most such objects come from regions in the main asteroid belt near Kirkwood gaps and other orbital resonances.

      During much of the 19th century, most discoveries concerning asteroids were based on studies of their orbits. The vast majority of knowledge about the physical characteristics of asteroids—for example, their size, shape, rotation period, composition, mass, and density—was learned beginning in the 20th century, in particular since the 1970s. As a result of such studies, these objects went from being merely “minor” planets to becoming small worlds in their own right. The discussion below follows this progression in knowledge, focusing first on asteroids as orbiting bodies and then on their physical nature.

Geography of the asteroid belt

      Geography in its most literal sense is a description of the features on the surface of Earth or another planet. Three coordinates—latitude, longitude, and altitude—suffice for locating all such features. Similarly, the location of any object in the solar system can be specified by three parameters—heliocentric ecliptic longitude, heliocentric ecliptic latitude, and heliocentric distance. Such positions, however, are valid for only an instant of time since all objects in the solar system are continuously in motion. Thus, a better descriptor of the “location” of a solar system object is the path, called the orbit, that it follows around the Sun (or, in the case of a planetary satellite [moon], the path around its parent planet).

      All asteroids orbit the Sun in elliptical orbits and move in the same direction as the major planets. Some elliptical orbits are very nearly circles, while others are highly elongated (eccentric). An orbit is completely described by six geometric parameters called its elements. Orbital elements, and hence the shape and orientation of the orbit, also vary with time because each object is gravitationally acting on, and being acted upon by, all other bodies in the solar system. In most cases, these gravitational effects can be accounted for so that accurate predictions of past and future locations can be made and a mean orbit can be defined. These mean orbits can then be used to describe the geography of the asteroid belt.

Names and orbits (orbit) of asteroids

      Because of their widespread occurrence, asteroids are assigned numbers as well as names. The numbers are assigned consecutively after accurate orbital elements have been determined. Ceres is officially known as (1) Ceres, Pallas as (2) Pallas, and so forth. Of the more than 360,000 asteroids discovered by 2007, about 40 percent were numbered. Asteroid discoverers have the right to choose names for their discoveries as soon as they are numbered. The names selected are submitted to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for approval. (In 2006 the IAU determined that Ceres, the largest known asteroid, also qualified as a member of a new category of solar system objects called dwarf planets.)

      Prior to the mid-20th century, asteroids were sometimes assigned numbers before accurate orbital elements had been determined, and so some numbered asteroids could not later be located. These objects were referred to as “lost” asteroids. The final lost numbered asteroid, (719) Albert, was recovered in 2000 after a lapse of 89 years. Many newly discovered asteroids still become “lost” because of an insufficiently long span of observations, but no new asteroids are assigned numbers until their orbits are reliably known.

      The Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., maintains computer files for all measurements of asteroid positions. Midway into the first decade of the 21st century, there were more than 40 million such positions in its database.

Distribution and Kirkwood gaps

 The great majority of the known asteroids move in orbits between those of Mars and Jupiter. Most of these orbits, in turn, have semimajor axes, or mean distances from the Sun, between 2.06 and 3.28 AU, a region called the main belt. The mean distances are not uniformly distributed but exhibit population depletions, or “gaps.” These so-called Kirkwood gaps are due to mean-motion resonances with Jupiter's orbital period. An asteroid with a mean distance from the Sun of 2.50 AU, for example, makes three circuits around the Sun in the time it takes Jupiter, which has a mean distance of 5.20 AU, to make one circuit. The asteroid is thus said to be in a three-to-one (written 3:1) resonance orbit with Jupiter. Consequently, once every three orbits, Jupiter and an asteroid in such an orbit would be in the same relative positions, and the asteroid would experience a gravitational force in a fixed direction. Repeated applications of this force would eventually change the mean distance of this asteroid—and others in similar orbits—thus creating a gap at 2.50 AU. Major gaps occur at distances from the Sun that correspond to resonances with Jupiter of 4:1, 3:1, 5:2, 7:3, and 2:1, with the respective mean distances being 2.06, 2.50, 2.82, 2.96, and 3.28. (See the top portion of the figure—>.) The major gap at the 4:1 resonance defines the nearest extent of the main belt; the gap at the 2:1 resonance, the farthest extent.

      Some mean-motion resonances, rather than dispersing asteroids, are observed to collect them. Outside the limits of the main belt, asteroids cluster near resonances of 5:1 (at 1.78 AU, called the Hungaria group), 7:4 (at 3.58 AU, the Cybele group), 3:2 (at 3.97 AU, the Hilda group), 4:3 (at 4.29 AU, the lone asteroid (279) Thule), and 1:1 (at 5.20 AU, the Trojan groups). (See below Hungarias and outer-belt asteroids (asteroid) and Trojan asteroids (asteroid) for additional discussion of these groups.) The presence of other resonances, called secular resonances, complicates the situation, particularly at the sunward edge of the belt. Secular resonances, in which two orbits interact through the motions of their ascending nodes, perihelia, or both, operate over timescales of millions of years to change the eccentricity and inclination of asteroids. Combinations of mean-motion and secular resonances can either result in long-term stabilization of asteroid orbits at certain mean-motion resonances, as is evidenced by the Hungaria, Cybele, Hilda, and Trojan asteroid groups, or cause the orbits to evolve away from the resonances, as is evidenced by the Kirkwood gaps.

Near-Earth asteroids

      Asteroids that can come close to Earth are called near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), although only some NEAs actually cross Earth's orbit. NEAs are divided into several classes. Asteroids belonging to the class most distant from Earth—those asteroids that can cross the orbit of Mars but that have perihelion distances greater than 1.3 AU—are dubbed Mars crossers. This class is further subdivided into two: shallow Mars crossers (perihelion distances no less than 1.58 AU but less than 1.67 AU) and deep Mars crossers (perihelion distances greater than 1.3 AU but less than 1.58 AU).

      The next most distant class of NEAs is the Amors. Members of this group have perihelion distances that are greater than 1.017 AU, which is Earth's aphelion distance, but no greater than 1.3 AU. Amor asteroids therefore do not at present cross Earth's orbit. Because of strong gravitational perturbations produced by their close approaches to Earth, however, the orbital elements of all Earth-approaching asteroids except the shallow Mars crossers change appreciably on timescales as short as years or decades. For this reason, about half the known Amors, including (1221) Amor, the namesake of the group, are part-time Earth crossers. Only asteroids that cross the orbits of planets—i.e., Earth-approaching asteroids and idiosyncratic objects such as (944) Hidalgo and Chiron (see below Asteroids in unusual orbits (asteroid))—suffer significant changes in their orbital elements on timescales shorter than many millions of years.

      There are two classes of NEAs that deeply cross Earth's orbit on an almost continuous basis. The first of these to be discovered were the Apollo asteroids, named for (1862) Apollo, which was discovered in 1932 but was lost shortly thereafter and not rediscovered until 1978. The mean distances of Apollo asteroids from the Sun are greater than or equal to 1 AU, and their perihelion distances are less than or equal to Earth's aphelion distance of 1.017 AU; thus, they cross Earth's orbit when near the closest points to the Sun in their own orbits. The other class of Earth-crossing asteroids is named Atens for (2062) Aten, which was discovered in 1976. The Aten asteroids have mean distances from the Sun that are less than 1 AU and aphelion distances that are greater than or equal to 0.983 AU, the perihelion distance of Earth; they cross Earth's orbit when near the farthest points from the Sun of their orbits.

      The class of NEAs that was the last to be recognized is composed of asteroids with orbits entirely inside that of Earth. Known as interior-to-Earth's-orbit (IEO) asteroids, they have mean distances from the Sun that are less than 1 AU and aphelion distances less than 0.983 AU; they do not cross Earth's orbit.

      In the early years of the 21st century the known IEO, Aten, Apollo, and Amor asteroids of all sizes numbered about 5, 350, 2,020, and 1,780, respectively, although these numbers are steadily increasing as the asteroid survey programs progress. Most of these were discovered since 1970, when dedicated searches for these types of asteroids were begun. Astronomers have estimated that there are roughly 50 Atens, 600 Apollos, and 250 Amors that have diameters larger than about one kilometre. Because they can approach quite close to Earth, some of the best information available on asteroids has come from Earth-based radar studies of NEAs. In 1968 the Apollo asteroid (1566) Icarus became the first NEA to be observed with radar. Some four decades later, about 200 NEAs had been so observed. Because of continuing improvements to the radar systems themselves and to the computers used to process the data, the information provided by this technique increased dramatically beginning in the final decade of the 20th century. For example, the first images of an asteroid, (4769) Castalia, were made using radar data obtained in 1989, more than two years before the first spacecraft flyby of an asteroid—(951) Gaspra by the Galileo spacecraft in 1991 (see below Spacecraft exploration (asteroid)). The observations of Castalia provided the first evidence in the solar system for a double-lobed object, interpreted to be two roughly equal-sized bodies in contact. Radar observations of (4179) Toutatis in 1992 revealed it to be several kilometres long with a peanut-shell shape; similar to Castalia, Toutatis appears predominantly to be two components in contact, one about twice as large as the other. The highest-resolution images show craters having diameters between 100 and 600 metres (roughly 300 and 2,000 feet). Radar images of (1620) Geographos obtained in 1994 were numerous enough and of sufficient quality for an animation to be made showing it rotating.

      The orbital characteristics of NEAs mean that some of these objects make close approaches to Earth and occasionally collide with it. In January 1991, for example, an Apollo asteroid (or, as an alternative description, a large meteoroid) with an estimated diameter of 10 metres passed by Earth within less than half the distance to the Moon. Such passages are not especially unusual. However, because of the small sizes of NEAs and the short time they spend close enough to Earth to be seen, it is unusual for such close passages to be observed. An example of a NEA for which the lead time for observation is large is (99942) Apophis. This Aten asteroid, which has a diameter of about 300 metres, is predicted to pass within 32,000 km of Earth—i.e., closer than communications satellites in geostationary orbits—on April 13, 2029; during that passage its probability of hitting Earth is thought to be near zero. In 2006, however, it was estimated that Apophis would have about 1 chance in 50,000 of colliding with Earth during the following close approach, on April 13, 2036. Observations made during the 2029 approach are expected to provide a definitive impact assessment.The collision of a sufficiently large NEA with Earth is generally recognized to pose a great potential danger to human beings and possibly to all life on the planet. For a detailed discussion of this topic, see Earth impact hazard.

Main-belt asteroid families

      Within the main belt are groups of asteroids that cluster with respect to certain mean orbital elements (semimajor axis, eccentricity, and inclination). Such groups are called families and are named for the lowest numbered asteroid in the family. Asteroid families are formed when an asteroid is disrupted in a catastrophic collision, the members of the family thus being pieces of the original asteroid. Theoretical studies indicate that catastrophic collisions between asteroids are common enough to account for the number of families observed. About 40 percent of the larger asteroids belong to such families, but as high a proportion as 90 percent of small asteroids (i.e., those about 1 km in diameter) may be family members because each catastrophic collision produces many more small fragments than large ones.

  The three largest families are named Eos, Koronis, and Themis. Each family has been determined to be compositionally homogeneous—that is, all the members of a family appear to have the same basic chemical makeup. If the asteroids belonging to each family are considered to be fragments of a single parent body, then their parent bodies must have had diameters of 200, 90, and 300 km, respectively. The smaller families present in the main belt have not been as well studied because their numbered members are fewer and smaller (and hence fainter when viewed telescopically). It is theorized that some of the Earth-crossing asteroids and the great majority of meteorites reaching Earth's surface are fragments produced in collisions similar to those that produced the asteroid families. For example, the asteroid Vesta, whose surface appears to be basaltic rock, is widely believed to be the parent body of the meteorites known as basaltic achondrite HEDs, a grouping of the related howardite, eucrite, and diogenite meteorite types. (For additional discussion of the HED meteorites and Vesta, see meteorite: Achondrites (meteorite).)

Hungarias and outer-belt asteroids

 Only one known concentration of asteroids, the Hungaria group, occupies the region between Mars and the inner edge of the main belt. The orbits of all the Hungarias lie outside the orbit of Mars, whose aphelion distance is 1.67 AU. (See the top portion of the figure—>.) Hungaria asteroids have nearly circular (low-eccentricity) orbits but large orbital inclinations to Earth's orbit and the general plane of the solar system.

      Four known asteroid groups fall beyond the main belt but within or near the orbit of Jupiter, with mean distances from the Sun between about 3.28 and 5.3 AU, as mentioned above in the section Distribution and Kirkwood gaps (asteroid). Collectively called outer-belt asteroids, they have orbital periods that range from more than one-half that of Jupiter to approximately Jupiter's period. Three of the outer-belt groups, the Cybeles, the Hildas, and Thule, are named after the lowest-numbered asteroid in each group. Members of the fourth group are called Trojan asteroids (see below). Midway through the first decade of the 21st century, about 930 Cybeles, 1,270 Hildas, 1 Thule, and 2,060 Trojans were known.

Trojan asteroids (Trojan planets)

      In 1772 the French mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange (Lagrange, Joseph-Louis, comte de l'Empire) predicted the existence and location of two groups of small bodies located near a pair of gravitationally stable points along Jupiter's orbit. These are positions (now called Lagrangian points and designated L₄ and L₅) where a small body can be held, by gravitational forces, at one vertex of an equilateral triangle whose other vertices are occupied by the massive bodies of Jupiter and the Sun. These positions, which lead and trail Jupiter by 60° in the plane of its orbit, are two of the five theoretical Lagrangian points in the solution to the circular, restricted three-body problem of celestial mechanics (see celestial mechanics: The restricted three-body problem (celestial mechanics)). The other three stable points are located along a line passing through the Sun and Jupiter. The presence of other planets, however—principally Saturn—perturbs the Sun-Jupiter-Trojan asteroid system enough to destabilize these points, and no asteroids have been found near them. In fact, because of this destabilization, most of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids move in orbits inclined as much as 40° from Jupiter's orbit and displaced as much as 70° from the leading and trailing positions of the true Lagrangian points.

      In 1906 the first of the predicted objects, (588) Achilles, was discovered near the Lagrangian point preceding Jupiter in its orbit. Within a year two more were found: (617) Patroclus, located near the trailing Lagrangian point, and (624) Hektor, near the leading Lagrangian point. It was later decided to continue naming such asteroids after participants in the Trojan War as recounted in Homer's epic work the Iliad and, furthermore, to name those near the leading point after Greek warriors and those near the trailing point after Trojan warriors. With the exception of the two “misplaced” names already bestowed (Hektor, the lone Trojan in the Greek camp, and Patroclus, the lone Greek in the Trojan camp), this tradition has been maintained.

      Of the more than 2,000 of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids discovered, 55 percent are located near the leading Lagrangian point and the remainder near the trailing one. Astronomers estimate that 1,800–2,800 of the total existing population of Jupiter's Trojans have diameters greater than 15 km.

      Since the discovery of Jupiter's orbital companions, the term Trojan has been applied to any small object occupying the equilateral Lagrangian points of other pairs of relatively massive bodies. Astronomers have searched for Trojan objects of Earth, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune, as well as of the Earth-Moon system. It was long considered doubtful whether truly stable orbits could exist near these Lagrangian points because of gravitational perturbations by the major planets. However, in 1990 an asteroid later named (5261) Eureka was discovered librating (oscillating) about the trailing Lagrangian point of Mars, and in 1998 a second such object was found; additional potential Martian Trojans are awaiting confirmation of their orbits. Four Trojans of Neptune, all associated with the leading Lagrangian point, were discovered beginning in 2001. Although Trojans of Saturn have yet to be found, objects librating about Lagrangian points of the systems formed by Saturn and its moon Tethys and Saturn and its moon Dione are known.

Asteroids in unusual orbits

      Although most asteroids travel in fairly circular orbits, there are notable exceptions. In addition to the near-Earth asteroids, discussed above, some objects are known to travel in orbits that extend far inside or outside the main belt. One of the most extreme is (3200) Phaethon, the first asteroid to be discovered by a spacecraft (the Infrared Astronomical Satellite in 1983). Phaethon approaches to within 0.14 AU of the Sun, well within the perihelion distance of 0.31 AU for Mercury, the innermost planet. By contrast, Phaethon's aphelion distance of 2.4 AU is in the main asteroid belt. This object is the parent body of the Geminid meteor stream, the concentration of meteoroids responsible for the annual Geminid meteor shower seen on Earth each December. Because the parent bodies of all other meteor streams identified to date are comets, Phaethon is considered by some to be a defunct comet—one that has lost its volatile materials and no longer displays the classic cometary features of a nebulous coma and a tail. Another asteroid, (944) Hidalgo, is also thought by some to be a defunct comet because of its unusual orbit. This object, discovered in 1920, travels sunward as near as 2.02 AU, which is at the inner edge of the main asteroid belt, and as far as 9.68 AU, which is just beyond the orbit of Saturn, at 9.54 AU.

      In contrast to the examples of Phaethon and Hidalgo is Chiron, which following its discovery in 1977 was classified as an asteroid, (2060) Chiron. In 1989 the object was observed to have a dusty coma surrounding it, and in 1991 the presence of cyanogen radicals was detected, a known constituent of the gas comas of comets. Chiron travels in an orbit that lies wholly exterior to the asteroid belt, having a perihelion distance of 8.43 AU (inside the orbit of Saturn) and an aphelion distance of 18.8 AU, which nearly reaches the orbit of Uranus at 19.2 AU. At the time of its discovery, Chiron was the most distant asteroid known. Within a few years additional objects were discovered traveling among the orbits of the giant planets. It is now known that Chiron belongs to a group collectively referred to as Centaur objects, all of which have elongated orbits with perihelia outside the orbit of Jupiter and aphelia near the orbit of Uranus or Neptune. Centaurs are thought to be icy bodies—in essence, giant comet nuclei—that have been gravitationally perturbed out of the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune and presently travel mainly between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. All Centaurs move in chaotic, planet-orbit-crossing orbits. Their orbits will evolve away from the Centaur region, and they will eventually collide with the Sun or a planet or be permanently ejected from the solar system.

      Asteroids traditionally have been distinguished from comets by characteristics based on physical differences, location in the solar system, and orbital properties. An object is classified as a comet when it displays “cometary activity”—i.e., a coma or tail (or any evidence of gas or dust coming from it). Objects in the Kuiper belt, all of which have mean distances from the Sun greater than that of Neptune, are considered to be comet nuclei. Because of their great distance from the Sun, however, they do not display the characteristic activity of comets. In addition, any object on a nonreturning orbit (a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit, rather than an elliptical one) is generally considered to be a comet.

      Although these distinctions apply most of the time, they are not always sufficient to classify an individual object as an asteroid or a comet. For example, an object found to be receding from the Sun on a nonreturning orbit and displaying no cometary activity could be a comet, or it could be a planet-crossing asteroid being ejected from the solar system after a close encounter with a planet, most likely Jupiter. Again, objects on some planet-crossing orbits may have originated in either the Kuiper belt or the main asteroid belt. Unless such an object reveals itself by displaying cometary activity, there is usually no way to determine its origin and thus to classify it unequivocally. The object may have formed as an icy body but lost its volatile materials during a series of passes into the inner solar system. Its burned-out remnant of rocky material would presently have more physical characteristics in common with asteroids than with other comets.

Asteroids as individual worlds

      The first measurements of the sizes of individual asteroids were made in the last years of the 19th century. A filar micrometer, an instrument normally used in conjunction with a telescope for visual measurement of the separations of double stars, was employed to estimate the diameters of the first four known asteroids. The results established that Ceres was the largest asteroid, having a diameter estimated to be nearly 800 km. These values remained the best available until new techniques for finding albedos (reflectivities) and diameters, based on infrared radiometry and polarization measurements, were introduced beginning about 1970 (see below Size and albedo (asteroid)). The first four asteroids came to be known as the “big four,” and, because all other asteroids were much fainter, they all were believed to be considerably smaller as well.

      The first asteroid to have its mass determined was Vesta—in 1966 from measurements of its perturbation of the orbit of asteroid (197) Arete. The first mineralogical determination of the surface composition of an asteroid was made in 1969 when spectral reflectance measurements (see below Composition (asteroid)) identified the mineral pyroxene in the surface material of Vesta.

Classification of asteroids

 In the mid-1970s astronomers using information gathered from studies of colour, spectral reflectance, and albedo recognized that asteroids could be grouped into three broad taxonomic classes, designated C, S, and M (see the bottom portion of the figure—>). At that time they estimated that about 75 percent belonged to class C, 15 percent to class S, and 5 percent to class M. The remaining 5 percent were unclassifiable owing to either poor data or genuinely unusual properties. Furthermore, they noted that the S class dominated the population at the inner edge of the asteroid belt, whereas the C class was dominant in the middle and outer regions of the belt.

      Within a decade this taxonomic system was expanded, and it was recognized that the asteroid belt comprised overlapping rings of differing taxonomic classes, with classes designated S, C, P, and D dominating the populations at distances from the Sun of about 2, 3, 4, and 5 AU, respectively. As more data became available from further observations, additional minor classes were recognized. For discussion of the relationship of the asteroid classes to their composition, see below Composition (asteroid).

Physical characteristics of asteroids

Rotation and shape

      The rotation periods and shapes of asteroids are determined primarily by monitoring their changing brightness on timescales of minutes to days. Short-period fluctuations in brightness caused by the rotation of an irregularly shaped asteroid or a spherical spotted asteroid (i.e., one with albedo differences) produce a light curve—a graph of brightness versus time—that repeats at regular intervals corresponding to an asteroid's rotation period. The range of brightness variation is closely related to an asteroid's shape or spottedness but is more difficult to interpret.

      In the early years of the 21st century, rotation periods were known for more than 2,300 asteroids. They range from about a minute to 50 days, but more than 70 percent lie between 4 and 24 hours. In some cases, periods longer than a few days may actually be due to precession (a smooth slow circling of the rotation axis) caused by an unseen satellite of the asteroid. Periods on the order of minutes are observed only for very small objects (those with diameters less than about 150 metres). The largest asteroids (those with diameters greater than about 200 km) have a mean rotation period close to 8 hours; the value increases to 13 hours for asteroids with diameters of about 100 km and then decreases to about 6 hours for those with diameters of about 10 km. The largest asteroids may have preserved the rotation rates they had when they were formed, but the smaller ones almost certainly have had theirs modified by subsequent collisions (collision) and, in the case of the very smallest, perhaps also by radiation effects. The difference in rotation periods between 200-km-class and 100-km-class asteroids is believed to stem from the fact that large asteroids retain all of the collision debris from minor collisions, whereas smaller asteroids retain more of the debris ejected in the direction opposite to that of their spins, causing a loss of angular momentum and thus a reduction in speed of rotation.

      Major collisions can completely disrupt smaller asteroids. The debris from such collisions makes still smaller asteroids, which can have virtually any shape or spin rate. Thus, the fact that no rotation periods shorter than about 2 hours have been observed for asteroids greater than about 150 metres in diameter implies that their material strengths are not high enough to withstand the centripetal forces that such rapid spins produce.

      It is impossible to distinguish mathematically between the rotation of a spotted sphere and an irregular shape of uniform reflectivity on the basis of observed brightness changes alone. Nevertheless, the fact that opposite sides of most asteroids appear to differ no more than a few percent in albedo suggests that their brightness variations are due mainly to changes in the projection of their illuminated portions as seen from Earth. Hence, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, astronomers generally accept that variations in reflectivity contribute little to the observed amplitude, or range in brightness variation, of an asteroid's rotational light curve. Vesta is a notable exception to this generalization because the difference in reflectivity between its opposite hemispheres is known to be sufficient to account for much of its modest light-curve amplitude.

      Observed light-curve amplitudes for asteroids range from zero to a factor of 6.5, the latter being the case for the Apollo asteroid Geographos. A rotating asteroid shows a light-curve amplitude of zero (no change in amplitude) when its shape is a uniform sphere or when it is viewed along one of its rotational poles. Before Geographos was studied by radar (see above Near-Earth asteroids (asteroid)), its 6.5 to 1 variation in brightness was ascribed to either of two possibilities: the asteroid is a cigar-shaped object that is being viewed along a line perpendicular to its rotational axis (which for normally rotating asteroids is the shortest axis), or it is a pair of objects nearly in contact that orbit each other around their centre of mass. The radar images ruled out the binary model, revealing that Geographos is a single, highly elongated object.

      The mean rotational light-curve amplitude for asteroids is a factor of about 1.3. This data, together with the assumptions discussed above, allow astronomers to estimate asteroid shapes, which occur in a wide range. Some asteroids, such as Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta, are nearly spherical, whereas others, such as (15) Eunomia, (107) Camilla, and (511) Davida, are quite elongated. Still others, as, for example, (1580) Betulia, Hektor, and Castalia (the last of which appears in radar observations to be two bodies in contact, as discussed above in Near-Earth asteroids (asteroid)), apparently have bizarre shapes.

Size and albedo

      About 30 asteroids are larger than 200 km. The largest, Ceres, has a diameter of about 940 km. It is followed by Pallas at 530 km, Vesta at 520 km, and (10) Hygiea at 410 km. Three asteroids are between 300 and 400 km in diameter, and about 23 between 200 and 300 km. It has been estimated that 250 asteroids are larger than 100 km in diameter and perhaps a million are larger than 1 km. The smallest known asteroids are members of the near-Earth group, some of which approach Earth to within a few hundredths of 1 AU. The smallest routinely observed Earth-approaching asteroids measure about 100 metres across.

      The most widely used technique for determining the sizes of asteroids (and other small bodies in the solar system) is that of thermal radiometry. This technique exploits the fact that the infrared radiation ( heat) emitted by an asteroid must balance the solar radiation it absorbs. By using a so-called thermal model to balance the measured intensity of infrared radiation with that of radiation at visual wavelengths, investigators are able to derive the diameter of the asteroid. Other remote-sensing techniques—for example, polarimetry, radar, and adaptive optics (techniques for minimizing the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere)—also are used, but they are limited to brighter, larger, or closer asteroids.

      The only techniques that measure the diameter directly (i.e., without having to model the actual observations) are those of stellar occultation and direct imaging using either advanced instruments on Earth (e.g., large telescopes equipped with adaptive optics or orbiting observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope) or passing spacecraft. In the method of stellar occultation, investigators measure the length of time that a star disappears from view owing to the passage of an asteroid between the star and Earth. Then, using the known distance and the rate of motion of the asteroid, they are able to determine the latter's diameter as projected onto the plane of the sky. The necessary techniques for imaging asteroids directly were perfected during the last years of the 20th century. They (and radar) can be used to observe an asteroid over a complete rotation cycle and so measure the three-dimensional shape. These results have made it possible to calibrate the indirect techniques, thermal radiometry in particular, such that diameter measurements made with thermal radiometry on asteroids larger than about 20 km are thought to be uncertain by less than 10 percent; for smaller asteroids the uncertainty is about 30 percent.

      The occultation technique is limited to the rare passages of asteroids in front of stars, and, because the technique measures only one cross section, it is best applied to fairly spherical asteroids. On the other hand, direct imaging (at least to date) has been limited to the nearer, brighter, or larger asteroids. Consequently, the majority of asteroid sizes have been and will probably continue to be obtained with indirect techniques. Direct imaging has allowed the accurate determination of the diameters of about two dozen asteroids, including Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta, compared with 2,300 measured with indirect techniques, principally thermal radiometry.

      A property that is closely related to size (and that also provides compositional information) is albedo. Albedo is the ratio between the amount of light actually reflected and that which would be reflected by a uniformly scattering disk of the same size, both observed at opposition. Snow has an albedo of approximately 1 and coal an albedo of about 0.05.

      An asteroid's apparent brightness depends on both its albedo and diameter as well as on its distance. For example, if Ceres and Vesta could both be observed at the same distance, Vesta would be the brighter of the two by about 15 percent, even though Vesta's diameter is only a little more than half that of Ceres. Vesta would appear brighter because its albedo is about 0.40, compared with 0.10 for Ceres.

      Asteroid albedos range from about 0.02 to more than 0.5 and may be divided into four groups: low (0.02–0.07), intermediate (0.08–0.12), moderate (0.13–0.28), and high (greater than 0.28). After corrections are added for the fact that the brighter and nearer asteroids are favoured for discovery, about 78 percent of known asteroids larger than about 25 km in diameter are found to be low-albedo objects. Most of these are located in the outer half of the main asteroid belt and among the outer-belt populations. More than 95 percent of outer-belt asteroids belong to this group. Roughly 18 percent of known asteroids belong to the moderate-albedo group, the vast majority of which are found in the inner half of the main belt. The intermediate- and high-albedo asteroid groups make up the remaining 4 percent of the population. For the most part, they occupy the same part of the main belt as the moderate-albedo objects.

      The albedo distribution for asteroids with diameters less than 25 km is poorly known because only a small fraction of this population has been characterized. However, if these objects are mostly fragments from a few asteroid families, then their albedo distribution may differ significantly from that of their larger siblings.

Mass and density

      Most asteroid masses are low, although present-day observations show that the asteroids measurably perturb the orbits of the major planets. Except for Mars, however, these perturbations are too small to allow the masses of the asteroids in question to be determined. Radio-ranging measurements that were transmitted from the surface of Mars between 1976 and 1980 by the two Viking landers and time-delay radar observations using the Mars Pathfinder lander made it possible to determine distances to Mars with an accuracy of about 10 metres. The three largest asteroids—Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas—were found to cause departures of Mars from its predicted orbit in excess of 50 metres over times of 10 years or less. The measured departures, in turn, were used to estimate the masses of the three asteroids. Masses for a number of other asteroids have been determined by noting their effect on the orbits of other asteroids that they approach closely and regularly, on the orbits of the asteroids' satellites, or on spacecraft orbiting or flying by the asteroids. For those asteroids whose diameters are determined and whose shapes are either spherical or ellipsoidal, their volumes are easily calculated. Knowledge of the mass and volume allows the density to be calculated. For asteroids with satellites, the density can be determined directly from the satellite's orbit without knowledge of the mass.

      The mass of the largest asteroid, Ceres, is 9.1 × 10²⁰ kg, or less than 0.0002 the mass of Earth. The masses of the second and third largest asteroids, Pallas and Vesta, are each only about one-fourth the mass of Ceres. The mass of the entire asteroid belt is roughly three times that of Ceres. Most of the mass in the asteroid belt is concentrated in the larger asteroids, with about 90 percent of the total in asteroids having diameters greater than 100 km. The 10th largest asteroid has only about ¹/₆₀ the mass of Ceres. Of the total mass of the asteroids, 90 percent is located in the main belt, 9 percent is in the outer belt (including Jupiter's Trojan asteroids), and the remainder is distributed among the Hungarias and planet-crossing asteroid populations.

      The densities of Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta are 2.2, 2.9, and 3.5 grams per cubic cm, respectively. These compare with 5.4, 5.2, and 5.5 for Mercury, Venus, and Earth, respectively; 3.9 for Mars; and 3.3 for the Moon. The density of Ceres is similar to that of a class of meteorites known as carbonaceous chondrites, which contain a larger fraction of volatile material than do ordinary terrestrial rocks and hence have a somewhat lower density. The density of Pallas and Vesta are similar to those of Mars and the Moon. Insofar as Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta are typical of asteroids in general, it can be concluded that main-belt asteroids are rocky bodies.

Composition

      The combination of albedos and spectral reflectance measurements—specifically, measures of the amount of reflected sunlight at wavelengths between about 0.3 and 1.1 micrometres (μm)—is used to classify asteroids into various taxonomic groups. If sufficient spectral resolution is available, especially extending to wavelengths of about 2.5 μm, these measurements also can be used to infer the composition of the surface reflecting the light. This can be done by comparing the asteroid data with data obtained in the laboratory using meteorites or terrestrial rocks or minerals.

       Asteroid taxonomic classesBy the end of the 1980s, spectral reflectance measurements at wavelengths between 0.3 and 1.1 μm were available for about 1,000 asteroids, while albedos were determined for roughly 2,000. Both types of data were available for about 400 asteroids. The table (Asteroid taxonomic classes) summarizes the taxonomic classes into which the asteroids are divided on the basis of such data. Starting in the 1990s, the use of detectors with improved resolution and sensitivity for spectral reflectance measurements resulted in revised taxonomies. These versions are similar to the one presented in the table, the major difference being that the higher-resolution data has allowed many of the classes, especially the S class, to be further subdivided.

      Asteroids of the B, C, F, and G classes have low albedos and spectral reflectances similar to those of carbonaceous chondritic meteorites and their constituent assemblages produced by hydrothermal alteration and/or metamorphism of carbonaceous precursor materials. Some C-class asteroids are known to have hydrated minerals on their surfaces, whereas Ceres, a G-class asteroid, probably has water present as a layer of permafrost. K- and S-class asteroids have moderate albedos and spectral reflectances similar to the stony iron meteorites, and they are known to contain significant amounts of silicates and metals, including the minerals olivine and pyroxene on their surfaces. M-class asteroids are moderate-albedo objects, may have significant amounts of nickel-iron metal in their surface material, and exhibit spectral reflectances similar to the nickel-iron meteorites (see iron meteorite). Paradoxically, however, some M-class asteroids have spectral features due to the presence of hydrated minerals. D-class asteroids have low albedos and show reflectance spectra similar to the spectrum exhibited by a relatively new type of carbonaceous chondrite, represented by the Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell in January 2000.

      P- and T-class asteroids have low albedos and no known meteorite or naturally occurring mineralogical counterparts, but they may contain a large fraction of carbon polymers or organic-rich silicates or both in their surface material. R-class asteroids are very rare. Their surface material has been identified as being most consistent with a pyroxene- and olivine-rich composition analogous to the pyroxene-olivine achondrite meteorites. The E-class asteroids have the highest albedos and have spectral reflectances that match those of the enstatite achondrite meteorites. V-class asteroids have reflectance properties closely matching those of one particular type of basaltic achondritic meteorite, the eucrites. The match is so good that some believe that the eucrites exhibited in museums are chips from the surface of a V-class asteroid that were knocked off during a major collision. The V class had been thought confined to the large asteroid Vesta and a few very small Earth-approaching asteroids until 2000, when asteroid (1459) Magnya—located at 3.15 AU from the Sun, compared with 2.36 AU for Vesta—was discovered also to have a basaltic surface.

      Among the larger asteroids (those with diameters greater than about 25 km), the C-class asteroids are the most common, accounting for about 65 percent by number. This is followed, in decreasing order, by the S class, at 15 percent; the D class, at 8 percent; and the P and M classes, at 4 percent each. The remaining classes constitute less than 4 percent of the population by number. In fact, there are no A-, E-, or Q-class asteroids in this size range, only one member of the R and V classes, and between two and five members of each of the B, F, G, K, and T classes.

 The distribution of the taxonomic classes throughout the asteroid belt is highly structured, as can be seen from the bottom portion of the figure—>. Some believe this variation with distance from the Sun means that the asteroids formed at or near their present locations and that a detailed comparison of the chemical composition of the asteroids in each region will provide constraints on models for the conditions that may have existed within the contracting solar nebula at the time the asteroids were formed.

Spacecraft exploration

 The first mission to rendezvous with an asteroid was the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft (later renamed NEAR Shoemaker), launched in 1996. The spacecraft entered orbit around (433) Eros, an S-class Amor asteroid, on Feb. 14, 2000, where it spent a year collecting images and other data before touching down on Eros's surface. (For additional description of Eros and the NEAR Shoemaker mission results, see Eros.) Prior to this, spacecraft on the way to their primary targets, or as part of their overall mission, made close flybys of several asteroids. Although the time spent close enough to these asteroids to resolve them was a fraction of the asteroids' rotation periods, it was sufficient to image the portion of the surface illuminated at the time of the flyby and, in some cases, to obtain mass estimates.

 The first asteroid studied during a close flyby was Gaspra, which was observed in October 1991 by the Galileo spacecraft en route to Jupiter. Galileo's images, taken from a distance of about 5,000 km, established that Gaspra, an S-class asteroid, is an irregular body with dimensions of 19 × 12 × 11 km. Nearly two years later, in August 1993, Galileo flew by (243) Ida, another S-class asteroid. Ida was found to be somewhat crescent-shaped when viewed from the poles, with overall dimensions of about 56 × 15 km, and to have a mean density of about 2.6 grams per cubic cm.

 After Galileo had passed Ida, examination of the images it took revealed a tiny object in orbit about the asteroid. Indirect evidence from as early as the 1970s had suggested the existence of natural satellites of asteroids, but Galileo provided the first confirmed instance of one. The moon was given the name Dactyl, from the Dactyli, a group of beings in Greek mythology who lived on Mount Ida in Crete. In 1999 astronomers using an Earth-based telescope equipped with adaptive optics discovered that the asteroid (45) Eugenia likewise has a moon. Once the orbit of an asteroid's moon has been established, it can be used to derive the density of the parent asteroid without knowing its mass. When this was done for Eugenia, its density turned out to be only 1.2 grams per cubic cm. This implies that Eugenia has large voids in its interior, because the materials of which it is composed have densities greater than 2.5.

      On its way to Eros, NEAR Shoemaker paid a brief visit to asteroid (253) Mathilde in June 1997. With a mean diameter of 56 km, Mathilde is a main-belt asteroid and was the first C-class asteroid to be imaged. The object has a density similar to Eugenia's and likewise is thought to have a porous interior. In July 1999 the Deep Space 1 spacecraft flew by (9969) Braille at a distance of only 26 km during a mission to test a number of advanced technologies in deep space, and about a half year later, in January 2000, the Saturn-bound Cassini-Huygens spacecraft imaged asteroid (2685) Masursky from a comparatively far distance of 1.6 million km. The Stardust spacecraft, on its way to collect dust from Comet Wild 2, flew by the main-belt asteroid (5535) Annefrank in November 2002, imaging the irregular object and determining it to be at least 6.6 km long, which is larger than estimated from Earth-based observations. The Hayabusa spacecraft, designed to collect asteroidal material and return it to Earth, rendezvoused with the Apollo asteroid (25143) Itokawa between September and December 2005. It found the asteroid's dimensions to be 535 × 294 × 209 metres and its density to be 1.9 grams per cubic cm.

Origin and evolution of the asteroids

      Available evidence indicates that the asteroids are the remnants of a “stillborn” planet. It is thought that at the time the planets were forming from the low-velocity collisions among asteroid-size planetesimals (planetesimal), one of them grew at a high rate and to a size larger than the others. In the final stages of its formation this planet, Jupiter, gravitationally scattered large planetesimals, some of which may have been as massive as Earth is today. These planetesimals were eventually either captured by Jupiter or another of the giant planets or ejected from the solar system. While they were passing through the inner solar system, however, such large planetesimals strongly perturbed the orbits of the planetesimals in the region of the asteroid belt, raising their mutual velocities to the average 5 km per second they exhibit today. The increased velocities ended the accretionary collisions in this region by transforming them into catastrophic disruptions. Only objects larger than about 500 km in diameter could have survived collisions with objects of comparable size at collision velocities of 5 km per second. Since that time, the asteroids have been collisionally evolving so that, with the exception of the very largest, most present-day asteroids are either remnants or fragments of past collisions.

      As collisions break down larger asteroids into smaller ones, they expose deeper layers of asteroidal material. If asteroids were compositionally homogeneous, this would have no noticeable result. Some of them, however, have become differentiated since their formation. This means that some asteroids, originally formed from so-called primitive material (i.e., material of solar composition with the volatile components removed), were heated, perhaps by short-lived radionuclides or solar magnetic induction, to the point where their interiors melted and geochemical processes occurred. In certain cases, temperatures became high enough for metallic iron to separate out. Being denser than other materials, the iron then sank to the centre, forming an iron core and forcing the less-dense basaltic lavas onto the surface. As pointed out above in the section Composition (asteroid), at least two asteroids with basaltic surfaces, Vesta and Magnya, survive to this day. Other differentiated asteroids, found today among the M-class asteroids, were disrupted by collisions that stripped away their crusts and mantles and exposed their iron cores. Still others may have had only their crusts partially stripped away, which exposed surfaces such as those visible today on the A-, E-, and R-class asteroids.

 Collisions were responsible for the formation of the Hirayama families and at least some of the planet-crossing asteroids. A number of the latter enter Earth's atmosphere, giving rise to sporadic meteors. Larger pieces survive passage through the atmosphere, some of which end up in museums and laboratories as meteorites (meteorite). Still larger ones produce impact craters such as Meteor Crater in Arizona in the southwestern United States, and one measuring roughly 10 km across (according to some, a comet nucleus rather than an asteroid) is believed responsible by many for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs (dinosaur) and numerous other species near the end of the Cretaceous Period some 65 million years ago. Fortunately, collisions of this sort are rare. According to current estimates, a few 1-km-diameter asteroids collide with Earth every million years. Collisions of objects in the 50–100-metre size range, such as that believed responsible for the locally destructive explosion over Siberia in 1908 (see Tunguska event), are thought to occur more often, once every few hundred years on average. For further discussion of the likelihood of near-Earth objects' colliding with Earth, see Earth impact hazard: Frequency of impacts (Earth impact hazard).

Edward F. Tedesco

Additional Reading

Summary articles about asteroids can be found in Richard P. Binzel, M. Antonietta Barucci, and Marcello Fulchignoni, “The Origins of the Asteroids,” Scientific American, 265(4):88–94 (October 1991); and Clark R. Chapman, “Asteroids,” in J. Kelly Beatty, Carolyn C. Petersen, and Andrew Chaikin (eds.), The New Solar System, 4th ed. (1999), pp. 337–350. Review and research papers are collected in Richard P. Binzel, Tom Gehrels, and Mildred Shapley Matthews (eds.), Asteroids II (1989); C.-I. Lagerkvist et al. (eds.), Asteroids, Comets, Meteors III (1990); Tom Gehrels (ed.), Hazards Due to Comets & Asteroids (1994); Alan W. Harris and Edward Bowell (eds.), Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991 (1992); Andrea Milani, Mario Di Martino, and Alberto Cellino (eds.), Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1993 (1994); William F. Bottke, Jr., et al. (eds.), Asteroids III (2002); and Daniela Lazzaro, Sylvio Ferraz-Mello, and Julio A. Fernández (eds.), Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors (2006).Edward F. Tedesco

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