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The small bodies in the solar system include comets, asteroids, the objects in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud, small planetary satellites, Triton, Pluto, Charon, and interplanetary dust.
The small bodies of the Solar System (asteroids, comets, Kuiper belt objects, icy moons, rings, and dust) represent archives of the state of the proto-solar disk at various times and places during the history of our Solar System’s formation.
A small Solar System body (SSSB) is an object in the Solar System that is neither a planet, a dwarf planet, nor a natural satellite. The term was first defined in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as follows: "All other objects, except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as 'Small Solar System Bodies ' ".
For this website, we define the term “Small Body” to include all natural bodies that are not a planet or natural satellite. This usually means all asteroids and comets, but can also include dwarf planets (e.g., Ceres) as small bodies.
Small body, any natural solar system object other than the Sun and the major planets and dwarf planets and their satellites (moons). The small bodies populate the solar system in vast numbers and include the mostly rocky asteroids, or minor planets, the predominantly icy comets, and the fragments.
20 kwi 2000 · The blurring of the boundaries between comets and asteroids forces us to reassess our knowledge of the nature and origin of the small bodies of the Solar System.
9 mar 2020 · Animation of small-bodies dynamics in the solar system. Done with Cosmographia: https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/cosmographia.htmlAnimation done for the public...
