the.com/asteroid belt
Space's junk drawer between Mars and Jupiter, mostly empty but fully famous.
means The region of our solar system between Mars and Jupiter where millions of rocky bodies orbit the Sun, debris and leftovers that never clumped together into a full planet.
from 'Asteroid' comes from Greek 'aster' (star) plus '-eidos' (form, resemblance) — literally 'star-shaped' or 'star-like,' coined because these small bodies looked like points of light in early telescopes, indistinguishable from stars except for their motion. 'Belt' is a plain English borrowing from the garment — a band wrapped around something — first applied to this orbital zone once 19th-century astronomers realized the scattered discoveries weren't random but traced a ring around the Sun.
- total mass
- less than 4% of the moon's mass
- average distance
- objects miles apart, not touching
- formation
- failed planet, Jupiter's gravity ruined it
- largest resident
- ceres, a dwarf planet with ice