Asteroids can be crudely categorized by their approximate location in the solar system:

• Near-Earth Asteroids
  • Atens (a < 1 AU)
  • Apollos (Earth-crossing)
  • Amors ( 1 AU < q < 1.3 AU)
• Main-Belt Asteroids (roughly 2.1 AU < a < 3.2 AU)
• Trojans (1:1 resonance)
• Centaurs (10 AU < a < 30 AU — i.e., between Saturn and Neptune. These objects are probably TNOs caught in the transition stage of evolving dynamically into Jupiter family short-period comets.)
• Trans-Neptunian Objects (a > a _Neptune = 30 AU)
  
  • also known as Kuiper Belt Objects
  • See my TNO Gallery page.

where a = semimajor axis and q = perihelion distance.

 Back to Asteroids.