The Asteroid Belt

The Asteroid Belt is a place between the inner and outer planets (between Mars and Jupiter) where millions of asteroids orbiting round the Sun. An asteroid is a piece of rock and metal that orbits the sun. Some people think they are pieces of loose material that never developed into a planet or that are rests from the sun and other planets.
During the 18th century, Johann Titus saw amathematical pattern between Mars and Jupiter, he believed it was a lost planet and during a long period of time astronomers looked for the "missing" planet; even the Celestial Police initiated a search, but the "answer" came from an Italian astronomer who found a body and called it Ceres. Later, another body was found, and was called Pallas, little by little they went discovering new masses, giving thecreation to the Asteroid Belt.
The Asteroid Belt is typically called the Main Belt to difference it from the Kuiper belt, scattered disc and others. This "belt" consists of Little asteroids floating around, if we could join all millions of little pieces together, the mass created would be even less than our Moons mass; more than half of its mass is made by Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. Ceres hasbeen one of the largest ones, with 25% of the total mass.
            Since it was discovered, the Asteroid belt has been studied; several unmanned spacecraft’s have been sent to visit the “belt”. During these studies, scientists have noticed that almost all asteroids of our solar system can be found there orbiting the Sun. A good example of what the Asteroid Belt is: a main rode were theasteroids are the cars and they travel all around and sometimes they collide, crashing the “vehicle” and breaking into smaller pieces.
Asteroids can be very small, as they can be similar to the size of a dwarf planet, they can go from a few meters to hundred miles wide. The Asteroid Belt is considered to have about forty to fifty thousand tiny asteroids that are about half a mile across. Anotherinteresting fact about asteroids in the belt is that if one them is captured by the gravity of a planet, the planet may be pulled and made a moon.
The belt is divided into inner and outer belt. The inner belt, that is conformed of asteroids that are like 400 million kilometers of the Sun, and are basically made of metals. The outer belt has asteroids 400million kilometers BEYOND the Sun, and are mainlyof rock; the outer belt asteroids are darker than those at the inner belt because they are rich in carbon.
The Asteroid Belt are left overs of the Solar System, this elements never formed into a big solid mass or planet because of Jupiter’s strong gravity pull. People think that the smaller the asteroid is, the more it has crushed in the past, now this pieces are the memories of a big collisionthat gave beginning to a huge star.
About 26 huge asteroids have been discovered, but there may be a trillion asteroids around; we can’t give an approximately because there are a lot of planets that are too small and far to be seen in the telescopes. As we said before, if we could take each Little asteroid and stick it up together, the planet would be smaller than our moon.
Quaoar is technicallythe biggest non-planet thing in the Solar System found by now, but because with all the technological advances, every day we find something new. Is bigger than Earth and all asteroids collected together! For a long time, Ceres was thought to be the biggest object but in 2001, while looking at old pictures of the sky, scientist’s discovered a bigger mass that orbits near Pluto.
As we have mentionthe biggest, is fair to mention Ida or BA; Ida is a little asteroid about 58 kilometers wide, and is unique because even though is really small, it has its own moon called Dactyl. BA is one of the smallest asteroids discovered; its width is about 6 meters. Other solar systems are believed to contain their own asteroid belt and we hope in the future, the technology will improve to go and visit...