Astronomy 2:5

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Adorah sat at her desk, sipping tea as she waited for footsteps to enter the room. It was a chillier evening, and she was starting to wear down as the semester ended. She finished marking the homework for a fourth year as a student entered, giving them a smile. As the bell rang, she shut down the door and waved her wand to dim the lights slightly. "Good evening! This week, we will be studying asteroids. Now, the word 'asteroid' quite literally means 'star-like' because the first spotted from Earth were faint lights in the night time sky. But they moved through celestial sphere much faster than stars."

Professor Zumwalt moved through the room, waving her wand so some images appeared on the board in the front. "Now, asteroids are rocky objects, sometimes with various make-ups of carbon, metals, and frozen water that orbit stars like our Sun. They are found throughout the solar system. The largest known is Ceres, also known as a dwarf planet, which is 1000km across. But there are others out there, some even smaller than your head," Professor Zumwalt said.

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"Now, most are found between Mars and Jupiter, which is referred to as the main asteroid belt." The Professor paused a moment to let the students reflect on her words before continuing. "For those of you acquainted with muggle movies, asteroid belts aren't the same daring struggle to fly through as you might think. Asteroid belts have millions of asteroids, true, but reasonably sized asteroids are typically millions of kilometers apart. If you were to stand on one, you most likely wouldn't see another with your naked eye."

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Yellow rings are planets the outermost is Jupiter. White dots are the main asteroid belt.
"Another new term to note is the Kirkwood Gap, which is a gap or dip in the distribution of the orbits of main-belt asteroids. They are caused by Jupiter pulling asteroids outward, creating rings of asteroids within the belt, very similar to the rings of Saturn." Professor Zumwalt changed the image on the board to represent this new term. "Grouping asteroids in these rings is one way to classify the asteroids," Professor Zumwalt hardly noticed that she'd gone into another lecture once again. "Well, that's it for tonight," she assured loudly as one student nodded off in the back. "No homework this week, but keep reading up on your notes from semester, as the exams are coming up soon."

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For full credit, RP the lesson.
 

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