That title falls to Ceres, a dwarf planet with a diameter of 592 miles. Conversely, some asteroids have a diameter that’s smaller than 33 feet.Īlso, while Vesta is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, it’s not the largest object there. The largest known asteroid, Vesta, has a diameter of 329 miles! For reference, that’s twice the size of California. There are many asteroids out there, and due to their sheer numbers, trying to provide an average size is a bit challenging. Most of the asteroids in the solar system reside between Mars and Jupiter, in an area known as the asteroid belt. Currently, NASA knows and tracks over 1.1 million asteroids in our solar system alone! While it’s unknown how asteroids got to their current locations, we do know that they’re closer to the Earth than comets. Asteroids formed during the early history of the solar system, but they formed close enough to the Sun to burn off any ice that they might have. In short, an asteroid is a planetary object made up of metals and other rocky materials. There can be quite a bit of confusion about this topic, so we developed this guide to break it all down for you. They’re completely different planetary bodies, and while they have a few things in common, they earn their distinct classifications. But did you know that asteroids and comets are not the same things? Space seems pretty empty, but if you look around long enough, you’ll start to spot various planetary objects, such as asteroids and comets.
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