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Simulator 3D, positions of asteroids

Revolution of asteroids

 Automatic translationAutomatic translation Category: asteroids and comets
Updated November 16, 2013

Using interactive simulator Astronoo:
Initially we are "above" the solar system (this is a view from the north celestial pole) and the passage of time is set to 10 days per second, which can see the planets rotate and asteroids in their orbits but you can go back in the future or in the past by using the buttons above. You can zoom in (top right) to the inner solar system while leaving the asteroid rotated.


With the arrows at the bottom right you can switch the orbital planes of asteroids and if you want more information, see the orbits more or less, use the buttons at the bottom left.

nota: You will notice that objects have different speeds, they respect the law of areas of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Approaching the perihelion (closest point to the Sun), objects accelerate at the approach of the aphelion (farthest point from the Sun), they slow down. To view distances (million km), click the aphelion / perihelion button.


Also play with the mouse: Clicking in the simulator gives you a hand to redirect the solar system and the desired view objects continue to revolve around the Sun. Click again to freeze the view and zoom.

nota: Warning, more the objects are close to you and more they are big.

Safe journey!



Millions of small rocky bodies called asteroids are present in the solar system. If the asteroid were "bright", we would see as much as stars in the night sky. A significant portion of them circulate in a ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, between 2 and 4 AU, called the asteroid belt. It thus marks the boundary between the terrestrial planets and the gas giants. An asteroid is a celestial object in the solar system, not visible to the naked eye because of its small size, which varies from a few tens of meters to several hundred kilometers in diameter. Objects less than 50 m in diameter are called meteorites. Asteroids are remnants of the protoplanetary disk that failed to gather enough to form a planet during their formation. Asteroids are of great importance in understanding the formation of the solar system, it is for this reason that astronomers show a strong interest in the study of these objects. Since February 2011, the NEOWISE NASA mission dedicated to research in the infrared small body, completed its quest on asteroids and comets in our solar system. NEOWISE discovered 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs). NEOs are asteroids and comets with orbits less than 1.3 AU, i.e. they can come within 45 million km from Earth orbit. The new model represents the coverage of NEOs is shown on the left of the image. It can thus be compared to the old model, which estimates the visible were higher. Observations NEOWISE reduce by 40%, the actual number of near-Earth asteroids that exceed 100 meters.

Asteroids Approximate
Ceres 1 974.6 km 1801
Pallas 2 582×556×500 km 1802
Vesta 4 572.6x557.2x446 km 1807
Hygiea 10 530x407x370 km 1849
Sylvia 87 384x262x232 km 1866
Hektor 624 370x195x195 km 1907
Europa 52 360x315x240 km 1858
Eunomia 15 357x355x212 km 1851
Davida 511 357x294x231 km 1903
Interamnia 704 350.3x303.6 km 1910
Camilla 107 344x246x205 km 1868
Juno 3 320x267x200 km 1804
Cybele 65 302x290x232 km 1861
Hermione 121 268x186x183 km 1872
Euphrosyne 31 255.9 km 1854
Chariklo 10199 248x258 km 1997
Iris 7 240x200x200 km 1847
Psyche 16 240x185x145 km 1852
Daphne 41 239x183x153 km 1856
Kalliope 22 235x144x124 km 1852
Amphitrite 29 233x212x193 km 1854
 chart of near-Earth asteroids

Image: Representation of the inner solar system where each red dot represents one asteroid. Of course the sizes of objects are not to scale. The infrared observations of NEOWISE are more precise than those obtained previously in visible light because asteroids of the same size emit substantially the same amount of infrared radiation, so they reflect a highly variable amount of visible light according to their albedo. The results of NEOWISE allow requalify the number of asteroids of significant size from 35 000 to 19 500, however, the majority of objects remains yet to be discovered.

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