John Hargraves, age 8, Brockville, Ont.
What are asteroids?
The planets are big round heavenly‑ bodies rolling in circles around the sun. There is also a swarm of small, odd‑shaped bodies chugging merrily around the sun. These are the asteroids, also called planetoids, or little planets. They belong in the planet class because each makes its own orbit around the sun.
The four inner planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Their orbits are fairly evenly spaced from each other. Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter there is a space wide enough to hold another planet. This belt of space is the home of the asteroids. Most, but not all of them, swing around between Mars and Jupiter.
A few come very close to the earth. At least one may come closer to us than the moon. They are our neighbors in the Solar System. Yet the distant planet Uranus was discovered before we knew they existed. The first asteroid to introduce itself appeared on New Years Day, 1801. It was named Ceres for the Greek goddess of harvest. Others were expected and it was decided to name them all for ladies from the old Greek myths.
In 1802, Fallas was discovered and two years later came Juno, Vesta was located and named in 1807. After that no new asteroid seemed eager to be discovered. This shyness wore off and in the past 100 years or so, more than 1500 asteroids have been located and named. It is estimated that there may be 30,000 of them altogether and the search is still going on.
By now you have guessed the problem in finding an asteroid.Since it is member of the planet class, each now arrival must have a name. No one would dream of giving a mere number to a small brother of our planet family. The list of Greek names soon ran out. New lists were gathered from other old legends. Masculine names were given to those asteroids whose orbits were out of the ordinary.
For all their fancy names, the asteroids are no more than smallish lumps of rock. The biggest we know of is Cores, the firs' to be discovered.
Ceres is alump of rock about 488 miles in diameter. Pallas., second to be discovered is 304 miles, Vesta 248 miles and Juno 118 miles in diameter.
It is thought that most of the asteroids are loss than 50 miles wide and many of them may be much, much smaller.
The total weight of the little planets has also been estimated. Our moon may weigh 20 times more than all of them ‑ and the earth weighs 83 times more than the moon. Like true planets, the asteroids are independent bodies. Each travels around its orbit at its own speed. Some take less than two years to make one yearly trip, some take more than twelve years.
A few renegades swing through the orbits of the planets, At least three tiny asteroids swing in to cross the orbit of Venus. One of these is Hermes, In February of. 1938, this small asteroid came within 485,000 miles of the earth. It comes within 220,000 miles of our orbit. So if the earth happened to be‑ in the right spot it would come closer to us than the: moon. This darling little traveler is estimated. to be. a chunk of rock less than a mile wide.