Brightest asteroid

The following is a collection of lists of exceptional asteroids in the Solar System. For the purposes of this article "asteroid" means minor planet up to the orbit of Jupiter, which includes the dwarf planet Ceres. For a complete list of minor planets in numerical order, see List of minor planets.

Asteroids are given a unique sequential identifying number once their orbit is precisely determined. Prior to this, they are known only by their systematic name or provisional designation, such as 1950 DA.

Estimating the sizes of asteroids from observations is difficult due to their irregular shapes, varying albedo, and small angular diameter. For example, pure C-type asteroids are much darker than most. Asteroids with only one or two axes measured may have a falsely inflated geometric mean diameter if the unknown second or third axis is significantly smaller than the primary axis. Asteroid 16 Psyche has an IRAS diameter of 253 km, yet has a more recent and accurate geometric mean of only 186 km.

The number of bodies grows rapidly as the size decreases. Based on IRAS data there are about 140 main-belt asteroids with a diameter greater than 120 km. For a more complete list, see List of Solar System objects by size.

The inner asteroid belt (defined as the region interior to the 3:1 Kirkwood gap at 2.50 AU) has few large asteroids. Of those in the above list, only 4 Vesta, 19 Fortuna, 6 Hebe, 7 Iris and 9 Metis orbit there.

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