AST 2002 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Acid Rain, Lunar Meteorite, Solar Wind
Document Summary
Asteroids are virtually undetectable to the naked eye and remained unnoticed for almost 2 centuries after the invention of the telescope. First asteroids discovered about 200 years ago. They can be recognized by their movement relative to the stars. Come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. The largest asteroid, ceres, is 1000 km in diameter (1/3 of the moon) Large enough for its own gravity to make it round. Much wider (equatorial) than it is tall (polar) due to impact crater. A dozen are large enough to be considered medium moons if they orbited a planet, but most are smaller. Small asteroids come in diverse shapes because they are fragments are larger, shattered ones. The gravity in small asteroids is too weak to shape them into spheres. Asteroids do(cid:374)"t add up to (cid:373)u(cid:272)h i(cid:374) total (cid:373)ass. All of the asteroids together would only be 2000 km in distance (1/2 of our moon)
