Minor planet
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A minor planet, according to the International Astronomical Union, is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006,
Pluto in True Color High Res
Ceres RC3 Haulani Crater
Vesta in natural color
Rosetta triumphs at asteroid Lutetia
Asteroid
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An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter. Asteroids are
Minor planet
…planets. In contrast to the eight official planets of the Solar System, all minor planets fail to clear their orbital neighborhood. Minor planets include asteroids (near-Earth objects, Earth trojans, Mars trojans, Mars-crossers, main-belt asteroids and Jupiter trojans), as well as distant minor planets (Uranus…
A composite image, to the same scale, of the asteroids imaged at high resolution prior to 2012. They are, from largest to smallest: 4 Vesta, 21 Lutetia, 253 Mathilde, 243 Ida and its moon Dactyl, 433 Eros, 951 Gaspra, 2867 Šteins, 25143 Itokawa.
Vesta (left), with Ceres (center) and the Moon (right) shown to scale
Giuseppe Velasquez, Giuseppe Piazzi and Ceres, oil on canvas, c. 1803
2013 ET, shown here in radar images, has a provisional designation