Asteroids are clumps of rock, the sizes of which range from less than a kilometer to a few hundred kilometers in diameter. They are generally found in the unusually large gap between Mars and Jupiter. There are probably more than 40,000 asteroids in this gap called the “asteroid belt.” In this paper we describe our efforts in confirming the identity of an asteroid and then calculating its three-dimensional orbit around the Sun, given the six elements of orbit.
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See supplementary material at TPT Online, http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.4801363>.
© 2013 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2013
American Association of Physics Teachers
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