• WordNet 3.6
    • adj asteroidal of or relating to or resembling an asteroid
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Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
  • Interesting fact: Seven asteroids were especially named for the Challenger astronauts who were killed in the 1986 failed launch of the space shuttle
    • a Asteroidal Of or pertaining to an asteroid, or to the asteroids.
    • ***
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
  • Interesting fact: Some asteroids have other asteroids orbiting them
    • asteroidal Resembling a star.
    • asteroidal Pertaining to the asteroids.
    • asteroidal Pertaining to the starfishes.
    • asteroidal Same as alcyonarian.
    • ***


  • Mark Twain
    “Noise proves nothing, Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.”


In literature:

Beyond the limits of the zodiac; applied to those asteroids that revolve outside the ancient zodiac.
"The Sailor's Word-Book" by William Henry Smyth
After Farous died, Dosey Asteroids employed a detective agency to investigate the matter.
"The Star Hyacinths" by James H. Schmitz
I think you must come from Venus, or one of the asteroids; or it may be from Sirius.
"The Blue Germ" by Martin Swayne
I'd eliminated both the asteroids themselves and the space around the asteroids as hiding places.
"The Risk Profession" by Donald Edwin Westlake
On the 13th of August, 1898, Herr G. Witt, of the observatory of Urania in Berlin, discovered a new asteroid by the photographic method.
"The Story of the Heavens" by Robert Stawell Ball
Every new planet, or subplanet, or sun or blasted asteroid seemed to call for some revision of known laws.
"Eight Keys to Eden" by Mark Irvin Clifton
Because of the extra-Terran clause Frank found himself with a good deal of free time when he wasn't flying the asteroid circuit.
"The Love of Frank Nineteen" by David Carpenter Knight
Martian Irrigation still was unexplainably low, as was Pluto Chemical and Asteroid Mining.
"Empire" by Clifford Donald Simak
Since 1846 no single year has passed without bringing its tribute of asteroidal discovery.
Very much smaller than any of these are the asteroids, of which Ceres, the largest, is less than 500 miles in diameter.
"Astronomy of To-day" by Cecil G. Dolmage

In poetry:

Let there be Light! The self-same Power
That out of formless dark and void
Endued with life's mysterious dower
Planet, and star, and asteroid;
"The Door Of Humility" by Alfred Austin
When first in his path a young asteroid found it,
As he sailed through the skies with the stars in his wake,
He thought 't was the sun, and kept circling around it
Till Edison signalled, "You've made a mistake."
"In Response" by Oliver Wendell Holmes

In news:

And by refining a model of the asteroid 's rotation, they'll get a better idea of its composition.
And that told them how the asteroid 's mass was distributed.
What would prompt NASA to incur the expense of a mission to two asteroids , instead of one.
We discover so many asteroids .
We know of 500,000 asteroids .
A space probe called OSIRIS-Rex has the goal of unlocking some of the secrets surrounding asteroids , including those that could pose a hazard to Earth.
Returning to moon, flying to Mars or landing on an asteroid all considered by NASA.
They may be one of the world's greatest rock bands, but they don't know anything about deflecting asteroids .
Solar radiation pressure would then exert a force on the asteroid 's newly reflective surface that would gently nudge it out of an Earth-bound trajectory.
Historically, objects larger than 10 meters across have been called asteroids .
Around 4 billion years ago, a realignment of the planets, especially the gravitational pull of massive Jupiter, began flinging asteroids toward the inner planets.
Meteor, comet or asteroid .
' there would be so much bombardment from asteroids that life may never evolve.'.
But NASA isn't done with asteroids .
Today the space agency launched a name-the- asteroid contest as efforts geared up to bring a piece of an asteroid home to Earth.

In science:

The SNfactory uses this temporal spacing to eliminate asteroids and reduce cosmic-ray contamination.
Rates and Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae
The images to be use d as a reference are stacked into a single coadded image, while the images to be searched are coadded into two separate images to allow for later checks for asteroids and cosmic rays.
Rates and Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae
An automated scanning program looks for objects in the convolution-matched, subtracted image and applies a variety of selection criteria to eliminate cosmic rays, asteroids, and subtraction and detector artifacts.
Rates and Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae
This choice was made by the NEAT group because a steroids shine in reﬂected sunlight and an open ﬁlter maximizes the amount of l ight detected from an asteroid.
Rates and Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae
Figure C.1 The ﬁlter used by the NEAT asteroid search on all fo ur ﬁngers of the QUESTII camera (Bes Optics 2003).
Rates and Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae