List of minor planets information

The catalog of minor planets is published by the Minor Planet Center and contains 629,008 entries, including 134340 Pluto.^[1] For an overview, see index.

Growing number of minor planets since 1995:

numbered and named bodies (listed)
numbered but unnamed bodies (listed)
unnumbered bodies (not part of this list)

The following is a list of numbered minor planets in ascending numerical order. With the exception of comets, minor planets are all small bodies in the Solar System, including asteroids, distant objects and dwarf planets. The catalog consists of hundreds of pages, each containing 1,000 minor planets. Every year, the Minor Planet Center, which operates on behalf of the International Astronomical Union, publishes thousands of newly numbered minor planets in its Minor Planet Circulars (see index).^[1]^[2] As of April 2024^[update], there are 680,000 numbered minor planets (secured discoveries) out of a total of 1,350,486 observed small Solar System bodies, with the remainder being unnumbered minor planets and comets.^[3]

The catalog's first object is 1 Ceres, discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801, while its best-known entry is Pluto, listed as 134340 Pluto. The vast majority (97.3%) of minor planets are asteroids from the asteroid belt (the catalog uses a color code to indicate a body's dynamical classification). There are more than a thousand different minor-planet discoverers observing from a growing list of registered observatories. In terms of numbers, the most prolific discoverers are Spacewatch, LINEAR, MLS, NEAT and CSS. There are also 23,542 named minor planets mostly after people, places and figures from mythology and fiction,^[4] which account for only 3.8% of all numbered catalog entries. (4596) 1981 QB and 669588 Pazura are currently the lowest-numbered unnamed and highest-numbered named minor planets, respectively.^[1]^[4]

It is expected that the upcoming survey by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will discover another 5 million minor planets during the next ten years—almost a tenfold increase from current numbers.^[5] While all main-belt asteroids with a diameter above 10 km (6.2 mi) have already been discovered, there might be as many as 10 trillion 1 m (3.3 ft)-sized asteroids or larger out to the orbit of Jupiter; and more than a trillion minor planets in the Kuiper belt.^[5]^[6] For minor planets grouped by a particular aspect or property, see § Specific lists.

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