The Asteroid Belt and Near-Earth Objects

These are big rocks that circle the Sun.

The vast majority of asteroids are safely beyond the orbit of Mars in an area.

Asteroids range in size from ____, which is 587 miles across, and are merely asteroidal fragments.

These are made of rock and/or iron; when they fall to Earth, they’re called meteorites.

Asteroids that are trapped in Jupiter’s orbit around the sun.

The “Big Four” of the Asteroid Belt

a mountain on Ceres 11 miles wide ad 2.5 miles high, is a cryovolcano.

It is 310 miles wide and about 12 miles deep, with a central peak higher than the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii.

Unusual bright white spots appear on the floor of Ceres’ ____ crater.

Thousands of small asteroids have orbits that cross or approach Earth's orbit.

The ________ of the International Astronomical Union keeps tabs on PHAs, and several observatories sweep the skies to discover more of them.

The 110-mile-wide geologic feature, which lies partially on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and partially offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, may be the last remaining sign of the impact that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs.

An impact by a small asteroid caused the famous Meteor Crater in northern Arizona, near ____

A massive spacecraft would fly along with the asteroid for a period of years.

A kind of eclipse that occurs when a moving body in the solar system passes in front of a star.

Two stars in orbit around a common center of mass.

An area of the Earth's surface that is expected to be visible for the occultation, similar to the path of totality during a solar eclipse.

They tells all you want to know about observing occultations.

NEOs are what the astronomers see as the Earth’s neighbors and most of them are identified as _____.

It is a surviving example of a protoplanet, which is a stage in the formation of a planet that is just before the formation of a planet.