ASTEROID

Asteroid

Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids. These terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disk of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet, but as minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered, their volatile-based surfaces were found to more closely resemble comets and so were often distinguished from traditional asteroids. Thus the term asteroid has come increasingly to refer specifically to the small bodies of the inner Solar System out to the orbit ...

The above text is a snippet from Wikipedia: Asteroid
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asteroid

Noun

  1. A naturally occurring solid object, which is smaller than a planet and is not a comet, that orbits a star
  2. In the Solar system, such a body that orbits within the orbit of Jupiter
  3. Any member of the taxonomic class Asteroidea; a starfish


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: asteroid
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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