{"id":22047,"date":"2025-01-29T03:35:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T22:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=22047"},"modified":"2025-04-06T17:04:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T11:34:53","slug":"asteroid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/asteroid\/","title":{"rendered":"What is an Asteroid?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Asteroids Latest News<\/h2>\n<p>A 14-year-old boy from Noida has earned recognition from NASA for his provisional discovery of an asteroid, currently labelled as \u20182023 OG40.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>About Asteroids<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Asteroids, sometimes called <strong>minor planets,<\/strong> are the <strong>rocky remnants of material leftover from <\/strong>the <strong>formation of the solar system<\/strong> and its planets approximately 4.6 billion years ago.<\/li>\n<li>They are <strong>small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun <\/strong>in highly flattened, or &#8220;elliptical&#8221; circles, often rotating erratically, tumbling, and falling through space.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>majority of asteroids<\/strong> originate from the <strong>main asteroid belt<\/strong>, a region <strong>between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Asteroids are found in other places, too. For example, <strong>some asteroids <\/strong>are <strong>found in the orbital path of planets.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>This means that the asteroid and the planet follow the same path around the sun.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><strong>Earth and a few other planets have asteroids like this<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Although asteroids orbit the Sun like planets, they are much <strong>smaller than planets.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Most asteroids are <strong>irregularly shaped,<\/strong> though a few are nearly spherical, and they are often pitted or cratered.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><strong>Some asteroids are hundreds of miles in diameter, but many<\/strong> more are as <strong>small as pebbles.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>More than 150 asteroid<\/strong>s are known to <strong>have a small companion moon<\/strong> (some have two moons).\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>There are also binary (double) asteroids, in which two rocky bodies of roughly equal size orbit each other, as well as triple asteroid systems.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What is the International Asteroid Discovery Project (IADP)?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is a program <strong>affiliated with NASA\u2019s International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC).<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is a<strong> citizen science program<\/strong> which lets <strong>participants discover asteroids <\/strong>by using software and datasets.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The citizen scientists can make original astronomical discoveries and participate in hands-on astronomy.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>participants <\/strong>are <strong>provided with datasets from IASC<\/strong>, which they have to download.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Calibrating them on <strong>Astronomica software<\/strong>, they then have to look for asteroids.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Asteroids FAQs<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Q1<\/strong>. What is the largest asteroid in the universe?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ans<\/strong>. The largest asteroid is called Ceres. It is about one-quarter the size of the moon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q2<\/strong>. How big is a comet?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ans<\/strong>. Comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock, and ices. They range from a few miles to tens of miles wide.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q3<\/strong>. Do asteroids hit planets?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ans<\/strong>. Stray asteroids and asteroid fragments have slammed into Earth and the other planets in the past, playing a major role in altering the geological history of the planets and in the evolution of life on Earth.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/trending\/trending-in-india\/noida-teen-earn-nasa-recognition-for-asteroid-discovery-will-get-to-name-it-9804195\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">IE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asteroids are the rocky remnants of material leftover from the formation of the solar system and its planets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}