List of asteroids

List of asteroids classified by size

An asteroid is a celestial object not observable to the naked eye because of its small size which varies from a few tens of meters to several hundred kilometers in diameter. Asteroids are part of our solar system and revolve around Him.
Objects less than 50 meters in diameter are called meteorites. Those are not satellites of planets but debris from protoplanetary disk that failed to coalesce into a planet since their formation.
Meteorites and comets bombard the terrestrial planets since the solar system's birth.

Although they appear wisely installed on their orbits between Mars and Jupiter, they are sometimes destructive and they should probably the emergence of life on Earth. The asteroid belt defines the boundary between the terrestrial planets and the gas planets, these rocks are related to our destiny.
The first asteroid was discovered by accident December 31, 1800 by Giuseppe Piazzi, director of the observatory of Palermo, Sicily. It is by observing the constellation of Taurus, he saw an unidentified object moving very slowly in the dark space.

His colleague, Carl Friedrich Gauss determined the exact distance from this unknown object and put that body between Mars and Jupiter. Piazzi named it Ceres, named after the Greek goddess who brings out the sap of the earth and animates the young shoots in spring.
Between 1802 and 1807, three more bodies were discovered Pallas, Juno and Vesta.
In 1868, 100 asteroids were known. The 1 000th discovery was approved in 1921 and 10000th in 1989. In March 2006, scientists had 129,436 registered asteroids.