What is meant by an asteroid belt?
Recently some of us got into a tizzy about an asteroid named Icarus. This little space traveler was due to make a close U turn around the sun along a path very close to the earth. With bated breath we waited for Icarus to fall into the sun or bash into the earth. But neither collision occurred. For a long time, astronomers assumed that the one and only asteroid belt was the wide open stretch of space roughly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The major part of this celestial territory is a spacious doughnut, approximately 966 million miles wide with a central hole about 282 million miles wide. This asteroid belt is populated with uncounted asteroids. Each one is a solid little heavenly body busily orbiting around the sun along its own path at its own particular speed. The motions of an asteroid are almost exactly like those of a bulky planet. Both travel in orbits around the starry sun at the center of our Solar System. Their positions and orbits are governed by the gravity of the
