In January 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi, an Italian astronomer, made a tremendous discovery while making a star chart. He noticed a relatively small body in the heavens, between Mars and Jupiter; initially he believed this body to be a comet, but he would ultimately realize this was an entirely new type of celestial object. This object was an asteroid, a hunk of rock 1000 kilometers in diameter orbiting the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. He named it Ceres, after the Sicilian goddess of grain. Over the next few years, three more asteroids were discovered; Pallas, Vesta, and Juno. The number of asteroid discoveries then began to rise sharply, with several hundred being discovered by the end of the 1800s. Today, there have been several hundred thousand asteroids discovered and assigned provisional designations, and thousands of new discoveries are made each year.
More general information
Asteroid Classifications
Where are these asteroids you speak of?
Why study asteroids?
Asteroid Exploration
Future Possibilities
References
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