Abstract
Eleven years ago, Hughes ( Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc. 199, 1149, 1982) gave the size distribution of 740 asteroids. This has now been updated using 1778 known asteroidal diameters. The mass distribution index of the large main-belt asteroids is now found to be 2.09 ± 0.10. A power law relationship has been obtained between the perihelion distance and the diameter of the smallest known asteroid in any group of asteroids that have a specific range of perihelion distance. This has been used, in conjunction with the size distribution function, to produce a “corrected” histogram of asteroidal perihelion distances in which the relative significance (in number) of the Trojan asteroids has been increased dramatically. It is also concluded that the mass of the asteroid belt, M A (g), is given by log M A = 26.21 (+1.4, −1.0).
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