> In our solar system, Vesta and Ceres are the two largest of which kind ofcelestial body?And the answer: asteroids. Located between Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt is where millions ofasteroids orbit the sun. The largest asteroid is named Ceres and is about 1,000km wide, while Vesta is about half that size. Both are still much smaller thanthe Earth's moon.Early in the life of the solar system, dust and rock circling the sun werepulled together by gravity into planets. But not all of the ingredients creatednew worlds. Many of the byproducts of the dawn of the solar system continue tobe just that – wayward dust and rock banded together by gravity. The asteroidbelt formed initially when the gravity of newly-formed Jupiter brought an end tothe formation of planetary bodies in that region. Consequently, the small,leftover bodies of rock began to collide with one another, fragmenting them intothe asteroids we observe today.While asteroids are not usually caught in Earth's gravity or stray too close toour surface, there are a few moments in Earth's history to which we canattribute an asteroid impact event. The most significant of which is known asthe Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, over 66 million years ago. This eventis described as a sudden mass extinction of 3/4 of life on this planet.Scientists believe an asteroid may have been the cause as due to the fact thatthe metal iridium is present in a thin layer of sediment called the K–Pgboundary, which can be found throughout the world in marine and terrestrialrocks. This metal is rare in the Earth's crust but abundant in asteroids. Did you know?The total mass of all the asteroids in the main asteroid belt (between 1.1 and1.9 million asteroids larger than 1 km in diameter, and millions of smallerones) combined is less than that of Earth's Moon. Check out NASA's exploration of these ancient rocks here[https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/asteroids/exploration/?page=0&per_page=10&order=launch_date+desc%2Ctitle+asc&search=&tags=Asteroids&category=33].