Imagine the Universe!
Imagine Home  |   Ask an Astrophysicist  |  
Ask an Astrophysicist

The Question

(Submitted April 25, 1997)

I want a picture of the asteroid belt!

The Answer

The individual asteroids are small and do not reflect a lot of sunlight, so it is not possible to view them all at once... you have to point a telescope at one at a time. Also, the NASA satellite Galileo took some nice pictures of asteroids, see:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951020.html and http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950630.html
The latter picture shows an asteroid that has its own little moon.

More pictures and information on asteroids is available at: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/asteroids.html

Andy Ptak
for the Ask an Astrophysicist Team

Questions on this topic are no longer responded to by the "Ask an Astrophysicist" service. See http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/ask_an_astronomer.html for help on other astronomy Q&A services.

Previous question
Prev
Main topic
Main
Next question
Next

If words seem to be missing from the articles, please read this.

Imagine the Universe! is a service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Alan Smale (Director), within the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Imagine Team
Project Leader: Dr. Jim Lochner
Curator:Meredith Gibb
Responsible NASA Official:Phil Newman
All material on this site has been created and updated between 1997-2008.
Last Updated: Thursday, 01-Dec-2005 13:58:39 EST