Asteroids are big space rocks. There are millions if not billions of asteroids in space. If they have the size of a planet, they are called planetoids. They are found in the inner and outer solar systems and all throughout space. The first spotted asteroid is called Ceres. It was founded by an astronomer by the name of Giuseppe Piazzi, and since it had the size of a planet, he thought that it was one. Later, astronomers found similar objects and they didn't classify them as planets. Instead, they called them the term "asteroids".
The asteroid belt is a ring of clustered asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter, separating the inner and the outer planets. There is another belt known as the Kuiper Belt. It's near Pluto, and it contains of icy materials unlike the asteroid belt.
There has been a lot of misunderstandings and I just wanted to clear it up. Meteoroids are small particles of asteroids. (Most of the time, they come from comets.) If they come close to the Earth's atmosphere, they are called meteors. Meteorites are the remains of the meteor that survived the Earth's atmosphere and are, later, found on Earth. Many people have trouble figuring out the difference between these terms, and I just wanted to tell you guys about it. (No idea who would debate about these things, but there are billions of people out there. There just has to be somebody. XD) If you see tons of meteors going in "one direction" in the sky, it is possible that you have seen a meteor shower. They are caused by comets when they go near the sun. Bits of their icy material falls off causing the particles to float in space. If, by chance, a group of the particles are near the Earth, a meteor shower occurs.
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