Asteroid Belt Cross Section

The graph shows the cross section of the asteroid belt. In the left column each asteroid is shown as a dot, and in the right column the distribution is outlined by isodensity contours. The top panels show the whole sample, and the other panels show each color type separately (blue is carbonaceous, red is rocky). The two dashed lines in the left column show the observational limits. The vertical dashed lines in the right column show the position of the highest asteroid density for the rocky (red) subsample and are added to guide the eye. Note that the distributions of the two asteroid types are significantly different.
Image credit: Tom Quinn and Zeljko Ivezic, SDSS Collaboration

This image is also available as a PostScript file (135 KB).

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