"This isn't really a belt, but just a ring of rocks that goes all the way around the Sun. There are so many, that people wonder if it used to be a planet that was broken to pieces after a giant object hit it. It also serves as a division between the inner planets and the giant gas planets."
The Asteroid Belt is made up of large and small rocks and chunks of ice called Asteroids that were left over from the creation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. They are rocky objects with round or irregular shapes. Some are up to several hundred km across, but most are very small.
More than 100,000 asteroids lie in this belt between Mars and Jupiter. These asteroids lie in a location in the solar system where there seems to be a large gap in the spacing between the planets. Scientists think that this debris may be the remains of an early planet, which broke up early in the solar system. Many of the Asteroids have been given names.
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