Terminology

Traditionally, small bodies orbiting the Sun were classified as asteroids, comets or meteoroids, with anything smaller than ten metres across being called a meteoroid. The term "asteroid" is somewhat ill-defined. It never had a formal definition, with the broader term minor planet being preferred by the International Astronomical Union until 2006, when the term "small Solar System body" was introduced to cover both minor planets and comets. Other languages prefer "planetoid" (Greek for "planet-like"), and this term is occasionally used in English for the larger asteroids. The word "planetesimal" has a similar meaning, but refers specifically to the small building blocks of the planets that existed at the time the Solar System was forming. The term "planetule" was coined by the geologist William Daniel Conybeare to describe minor planets, but is not in common use.

When discovered, asteroids were seen as a class of objects distinct from comets, and there was no unified term for the two until "small Solar System body" was coined in 2006. The main difference between an asteroid and a comet is that a comet shows a coma due to sublimation of near surface ices by solar radiation. A few objects have ended up being dual-listed because they were first classified as minor planets but later showed evidence of cometary activity. Conversely, some (perhaps all) comets are eventually depleted of their surface volatile ices and become asteroids. A further distinction is that comets typically have more eccentric orbits than most asteroids; most "asteroids" with notably eccentric orbits are probably dormant or extinct comets.

For almost two centuries, from the discovery of the first asteroid, 1 Ceres, in 1801 until the discovery of the first centaur, 2060 Chiron, in 1977, all known asteroids spent most of their time at or within the orbit of Jupiter, though a few such as 944 Hidalgo ventured far beyond Jupiter for part of their orbit. When astronomers started finding additional small bodies that permanently resided further out than Jupiter, now called centaurs, they numbered them among the traditional asteroids, though there was debate over whether they should be classified as asteroids or as a new type of object. Then, when the first trans-Neptunian object, 1992 QB1, was discovered in 1992, and especially when large numbers of similar objects started turning up, new terms were invented to sidestep the issue: Kuiper Belt object (KBO), trans-Neptunian object (TNO), scattered-disc object (SDO), and so on. These inhabit the cold outer reaches of the Solar System where ices remain solid and comet-like bodies are not expected to exhibit much cometary activity; if centaurs or TNOs were to venture close to the Sun, their volatile ices would sublimate, and traditional approaches would classify them as comets rather than asteroids.