Asteroids

Explore 13.1 Asteroids to learn about the diverse population of small objects in the solar system known as asteroids.
Back in 2003, I had the unique experience of personally discovering an asteroid. Watch the video My Experience Discovering an Asteroid. You can also see this new story from when I went on to discover four more asteroids with my high school students.
Astronomers continue to discover new asteroids all the time - most of them in the asteroid belt. Watch the incredible video Asteroid Discovery - 1970 to 2015, which shows a small green flash every time a new asteroid has been discovered in the past 30 years. (You might want to skip to the middle of the video - that’s when the rate of asteroid discoveries really gets cranking.) By the end of the video, you can get a sense of just how many asteroids there are in our solar system. In fact, that number in the bottom left corner is the number of asteroids discovered up to that point.
As you saw in the reading, we’ve even been able to study many asteroids up close with space missions. Check out the incredible video Asteroid Bennu’s Surprising Surface to learn see amazing images and animations from the OSIRIS-REx mission.