WASHINGTON, April 6: The solar system’s main asteroid belt is dotted with between 1.1 million and 1.9 million asteroids measuring more than one kilometre in diameter — twice as many as previously thought, according to a study in the April issue of the Astronomical Journal.

The study was conducted by Edward Tedesco of New Hampshire-based TerraSystems and Francois-Xavier Desert of France’s Grenoble Observatory, using the European Space Agency’s Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) satellite.

“If you consider the average value of 1.5 million asteroids, the ISO result is about twice as high as estimated by two other recent studies in visible light,” Tedesco said.

He added that the “best estimate” would be around 1.2 million asteroids — “give or take 500,000.”—AFP