part_of baptistina family
A ___MASK92___ is an icy small Solar System body that , when passing close to the Sun , warms and begins to evolve gasses , a process called outgassing . This produces a visible atmosphere or coma , and sometimes also a tail . These phenomena are due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the ___MASK92___ . ___MASK92___ nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of loose collections of ice , dust , and small rocky particles . The coma may be up to 15 times the Earth ' s diameter , while the tail may stretch one astronomical unit . If sufficiently bright , a ___MASK92___ may be seen from the Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30 ° ( 60 Moons ) across the sky . Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures . Wide - field Infrared Survey Explorer ( WISE ) is a NASA infrared - wavelength astronomical space telescope launched in ___MASK33___ 2009 , and placed in hibernation in February 2011 when its transmitter turned off . It was re - activated in 2013 . WISE discovered thousands of minor planets and numerous star clusters . Its observations also supported the discovery of the first Y Dwarf and Earth trojan asteroid . ___MASK17___ are the parameters required to uniquely identify a specific orbit . In ___MASK70___ these elements are generally considered in classical two - body systems , where a Kepler orbit is used ( derived from Newton ' s laws of motion and Newton ' s law of universal gravitation ). There are many different ways to mathematically describe the same orbit , but certain schemes , each consisting of a set of six parameters , are commonly used in ___MASK35___ and orbital mechanics . The Baptistina ___MASK67___ is an asteroid ___MASK67___ that was probably produced by the breakup of an asteroid 170 km ( 110 mi ) across 80 million years ago following an impact with a smaller body . The two largest presumed remnants of the parent asteroid are main - belt asteroids 298 Baptistina and 1696 Nurmela . The Baptistina ___MASK67___ may consist of uncommon carbonaceous chondrite asteroids and meteoroids in similar orbits . Many mountain - sized fragments from the collision would have leaked into the inner solar ___MASK41___ through orbital resonances with Mars and Jupiter , causing a prolonged series of asteroid impacts . Previously this collision was believed to have occurred about 160 million years ago , and many impacts between 100 and 50 million years ago were attributed to it . However , new data in 2011 from the Wide - field Infrared Survey Explorer revised the date of the proposed collision which broke up the parent asteroid to about 80 million years ago . Nice (; Niçard , classical norm , or "", nonstandard , ) is the fifth most populous ___MASK78___ in ___MASK15___ and the capital of the Alpes - Maritimes " département ". The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative ___MASK78___ limits , with a population of about 1 million on an area of . Located in the French Riviera , on the south east coast of ___MASK15___ on the Mediterranean ___MASK38___ , at the foot of the Alps , Nice is the second - largest French ___MASK78___ on the Mediterranean coast and the second - largest ___MASK78___ in the Provence - Alpes - Côte d ' Azur region after Marseille . Nice is about 13 kilometres ( 8 miles ) from the principality of Monaco , and its airport is a gateway to the principality as well . A minor planet is an ___MASK62___ in direct orbit around the Sun that is neither a planet nor exclusively classified as a ___MASK92___ . Minor planets can be dwarf planets , asteroids , trojans , centaurs , ___MASK88___ objects , and other trans - Neptunian objects . As of 2016 , the orbits of 709 , 706 minor planets were archived at the Minor Planet Center , 469 , 275 of which had received permanent numbers ). The ___MASK10___ is the circumstellar disc in the Solar ___MASK41___ located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter . It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets . The ___MASK10___ is also termed the main ___MASK10___ or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar ___MASK41___ such as near - Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids . About half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids : Ceres , Vesta , Pallas , and Hygiea . The total mass of the ___MASK10___ is approximately 4 % that of the Moon , or 22 % that of Pluto , and roughly twice that of Pluto ' s moon Charon ( whose diameter is 1200 km ). The ___MASK85___ is the star at the ___MASK3___ of the Solar ___MASK41___ . It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma , with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process .< ref name =" doi10 . 1146 / annurev - astro - 081913 - 040012 "></ ref > It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth . Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth , and its mass is about 330 , 000 times that of Earth , accounting for about 99 . 86 % of the total mass of the Solar ___MASK41___ . About three quarters of the ___MASK85___ ' s mass consists of hydrogen (~ 73 %); the rest is mostly helium (~ ___MASK53___ %), with much smaller quantities of heavier elements , including oxygen , carbon , neon , and iron . The proper ___MASK17___ of an orbit are constants of motion of an object in space that remain practically unchanged over an astronomically long timescale . The term is usually used to describe the three quantities : ___MASK66___ is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar ___MASK41___ . It is a giant planet with a mass one - thousandth that of the Sun , but two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar ___MASK41___ combined . ___MASK66___ is a gas giant , along with Saturn , with the other two giant planets , Uranus and Neptune , being ice giants . ___MASK66___ was known to astronomers of ancient times . The Romans named it after their god ___MASK66___ . When viewed from Earth , ___MASK66___ can reach an apparent magnitude of  2 . 94 , bright enough for its reflected light to cast shadows , and making it on average the third - brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus . Auguste Honoré Charlois ( ___MASK82___ 26 , 1864  March 26 , ___MASK61___ ) was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working at the Nice Observatory in southeastern France . An asteroid ___MASK67___ is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements , such as semimajor axis , eccentricity , and orbital inclination . The members of the families are ___MASK96___ to be fragments of past asteroid collisions . An asteroid ___MASK67___ is a more specific term than asteroid group whose members , while sharing some broad orbital characteristics , may be otherwise unrelated to each other . A planet is an astronomical ___MASK45___ orbiting a star or stellar remnant that The term " planet " is ancient , with ties to ___MASK54___ , astrology , science , mythology , and religion . Several planets in the Solar System can be seen with the naked eye . These were regarded by many early cultures as divine , or as emissaries of deities . As scientific knowledge advanced , human perception of the planets changed , incorporating a number of disparate objects . In 2006 , the International Astronomical Union ( IAU ) officially adopted a resolution defining planets within the Solar System . This definition is controversial because it excludes many objects of planetary mass based on where or what they orbit . Although eight of the planetary bodies discovered before ___MASK58___ remain " planets " under the modern definition , some celestial bodies , such as Ceres , Pallas , Juno and Vesta ( each an object in the solar asteroid belt ), and Pluto ( the first trans - Neptunian object discovered ), that were once considered planets by the scientific community , are no longer viewed as such . Yrjö Väisälä ( 6 ___MASK81___ 1891 in Utra , Kontiolahti , Grand Duchy of Finland  21 July ___MASK18___ in Rymättylä , Finland ) was a Finnish astronomer and physicist . 1696 Nurmela , provisional designation , is a carbonaceous Baptistina asteroid from the inner regions of the ___MASK10___ , approximately 10 kilometers in diameter . It was discovered on 18 March 1939 , by Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä at Turku Observatory in Southwest Finland . The Flora or Florian ___MASK67___ of asteroids is a large grouping of S - type asteroids in the ___MASK97___ , whose origin and properties are relatively poorly understood at present . Roughly 4  5 % of all main belt asteroids belong to this ___MASK67___ . Asteroids are minor planets , especially those of the inner Solar ___MASK41___ . The larger ones have also been called planetoids . These terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active ___MASK92___ . As minor planets in the outer Solar ___MASK41___ were discovered and found to have volatile - based surfaces that resemble those of comets , they were often distinguished from asteroids of the asteroid belt . In this article , the term " asteroid " refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar ___MASK41___ including those co - orbital with Jupiter . 298 Baptistina is an asteroid orbiting in the ___MASK10___ . It is the namesake of the Baptistina ___MASK67___ . It was discovered on ___MASK81___ 9 , 1890 , by Auguste Charlois of Nice . The source of its name is unknown . It measures somewhere around in diameter . Although it has an orbit similar to the Flora ___MASK67___ asteroids , Baptistina is an unrelated interloper . It was once considered a possible source of the impactor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs , a possibility ruled out by the Wide - field Infrared Survey Explorer in 2011 . "( See Baptistina ___MASK67___ .)"