The Asteroid Belt

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        The largest asteroid that has been found is the asteroid belt is as big as Texas. It has been given the name of Ceres. An asteroid is a chunk of rock in space. It is what was leftover when the Sun and planets formed. The asteroid belt is located between the planet Mars and Jupiter. There is where most of the asteroids are in the solar system.

Asteroid Belt

    The asteroid belt contains asteroids that circle around the Sun. Sometimes asteroids collide with each other and the asteroid might break up into smaller pieces. Asteroids can be from a few feet to hundreds of miles wide. The asteroid belt has more than 40,000 asteroids that are half a mile long. Gravitational pull form a planet can pull an asteroid form the belt and make it orbit around the planet like a moon.

How long does it take the asteroid belt to orbit around the Sun once?

The elliptical orbit of the asteroid belt takes three through six years.

Sources:

    http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system_level1/asteroids.html

    http://www.solarviews.com/eng/asteroid.htm

Images from:

    http://www.shrox.com/AsteriodBeltSec.jpg

    http://www.arcadestudio.com/img/3d_asteroids.jpg

    http://sciencegraphics.net/images/astronomy/asteroids.jpg

    http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/_images/photos/asteroid.gif

    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/kids/2003/12/images/asteroid-big.jpg

    http://62.90.118.241/_Uploads/380asteroid_belt.gif

    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/spitzer/spitzer-042005-browse.jpg

    http://www.windows.ucar.edu/brain_storming/Project_Art/Toby/asteroid_belt.gif