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Summary
| Description |
English: This histogram clearly shows the primary Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid main belt. These gaps (labeled "4:1", "3:1", "5:2", "7:3", "2:1") are caused by mean-motion resonances between an asteroid and Jupiter. For example, the 3:1 Kirkwood gap is located where the ratio of an asteroid's orbital period to that of Jupiter is 3/1 (the asteroid completes 3 orbits for every 1 orbit of Jupiter). The effect of these mean-motion resonances is a change in the asteroid's orbital elements (particularly semimajor axis) sufficient to create these gaps in semimajor axis space.
The inner main-belt (a < 2.5 AU), middle main-belt (2.5 AU < a > 2.82 AU), and outer main-belt (a > 2.82 AU) are colored in blue, orange, and green respectively. Asteroid osculating elements are from JPL SSDB (accessed 13 May 2026) https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_query.html. |
| Date | |
| Source | Own work |
| Author | Thunkii, based on previous version by Alan Chamberlain, JPL/Caltech |
| Other versions | File:Kirkwood_Gaps.svg (older) |
Licensing
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
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File history
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| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| current | 23:53, 16 May 2026 | | 533 × 384 (186 KB) | Thunkii | cropped |
| 08:37, 16 May 2026 |  | 576 × 384 (320 KB) | Thunkii | Uploaded own work with UploadWizard |
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