It is believed that the asteroid belt, the area between Mars and Jupiter, may at one time have been the location of another planet which was pulverized by a cosmic collision with another body such as a comet travelling through our solar system. Another contrasting theory is that the asteroid belt represents material from the early stages of our solar system which simply failed to form into planetary forms.

To date, approximately 338 asteroids have been identified with Ceres, the largest known asteroid, measuring over 900 kilometers across and to be comprised of water by up to 25%! In fact more than 200 asteroids have been discovered so far which measure at least 100 kilometers in diameter. For an extensive list of asteroids with associated details (discoverer etc), click here.

Note: Asteroid Ceres depicted below was discovered by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi on the first day of 1801. With a diameter of nearly 1000 km across, Ceres is the only dwarf planet amongst the members of the asteroid belt. It is characterized with a slightly eccentric orbit (e=0.079) which requires 4.60 years for one complete orbit around the sun. Its perihelion and aphelion distances are 2.547 and 2.986 AU, respectively, with a magnitude at opposition of approximately 6.64.