Ceres Vesta Pallas The Minor Planets
September 24th 2008 07:16
Asteroid 433 Eros is the second largest known Near Earth Asteroid: NASA/JHU
There are 9 planets in our solar system, oh sorry 8 planets poor Pluto was demoted to dwarf status.
There was a similar controversy that occurred around1850. The controversy revolved on whether or not the asteroids discovered between Mars and Jupiter should be considered equal to the seven other planets that were already discovered.
Vesta was the fourth asteroid to be discovered and has a diameter of 525 kilometers
Uranus was discovered in 1781 at just the distance where Bode’s Law predicted a seventh planet including the gap between Mars and Jupiter should be. This sparked a frenzied search for a new planet in the gap between Mars and Jupiter. The search ended on January 1, 1801 when Italian monk named Guiseppe Piazzi at the Palermo Observatory discovered a 'star' that had moved from its position the previous night It was found to be a body that matched the exact distance predicted by Bode's Law. Piazzi named the new “planet” Ceres after Ceres, the Roman goddess of harvest.
On March 28, 1802 Heinrich Olbers discovered a second small body while observing Ceres.Olbers named this new body Pallas. Another astronomer Wilhelm Herschel had conducted further studies on these two objects and found that neither of these bodies fitted the conventional idea of a planet because they were so small that their images could not be seen clearly through a telescope. Herschel argued that Ceres and Pallas did not fit the criteria of other planets; in fact these two objects did not look like other planets. Herschel proposed a new category for these objects and called them asteroids. The name asteroid originated from the Greek word meaning ' star like'.
After the discovery of Ceres Ceres is approximately 950 kilometers in diameter.
Another asteroid was discovered Pallas the second largest asteroid. Discovered and named by astronomer Heinrich Olbers on March 28, 1802. It has a diameter of 532km
Vesta was the fourth asteroid to be discovered and has a diameter of 525 kilometers. The current estimate of asteroids in our solar system is around 1.1 to 1.9 million. Almost 5000 asteroids are being discovered every month the largest asteroid is currently Ceres. Although most are never visible with the unaided eye, however Ceres, Pallas and Vesta even Eros are visible from Earth at times with binoculars or a small telescope. Apart from the usual asteroids there is another class of asteroids called near earth objects these are asteroids that intersect Earth’s orbit on a regular basis.
Asteroid 433 Eros is the second largest known Near Earth Asteroid. It has a diameter of 16.84 km discovered in 1898.
Another frequent visitor is 1036 Ganymede
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Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
Well done.
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
Thank you for the kind words.
I may not get it right every time but I try to keep things balanced, I guess it helps when you enjoy what one does and helps spread a little understanding about the world we live in.
Cheers
Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
Nice to hear from you again I must
thank you for the comments. I agree with you, we do live in a fascinating universe.
Despite all the chaos and sometimes violent evolution with the birth of our Solar system, and yes there are many rouge objects floating within our Solar System ,we for the most part keep dogging the "big" bullet.!!