Asteroid Belt

The ring of asteroids whose orbit around the Sun is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The total number is estimated at around 75 000 and 100 000. Several thousand have already been catalogued. For a long time, it was thought that they were the remnants of a destroyed planet. However, the current theory is that they are the dispersed matter of a larger planet that never actually formed because the condensation of this matter into a larger whole was prevented by Jupiter's powerful gravitational force.

The first asteroids, which remain the most widely known, were discovered at the beginning of the 19th century in the asteroid belt: Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta. Ceres, Pallas and Vesta are the three largest asteroids in the asteroid belt.