Daniel Kirkwood

…were noticed about 1860 by Daniel Kirkwood, an American mathematician and astronomer, who explained the gaps as resulting from perturbations by Jupiter. An object that revolved around the Sun in one of the gaps would be disturbed regularly by Jupiter’s gravitational pull and eventually moved to another orbit. Some of…

…next major discovery was made: Daniel Kirkwood, an American astronomer, noted that there were gaps (now known as Kirkwood gaps) in the distribution of asteroid distances from the Sun (see below Distribution and Kirkwood gaps). The introduction of photography to the search for new asteroids in