Transit of asteroids

Imagine we live in a giant playground called the Solar System, and we have lots of friends called planets, orbiting around the sun. Now imagine that sometimes, we also have some other friends called asteroids who are flying around in space. When an asteroid gets really close to one of our planet friends, we call that a "transit."

Imagine you and your friends are playing a game where you run around the playground in circles. If you stand still in the middle of the playground and watch your friends running around you, they will sometimes pass in front of you, blocking your view of the other friends who are behind them. In the same way, when an asteroid is passing in front of a planet, we call that a transit.

Asteroids are small rocks or chunks of ice that can go on long trips across the Solar System. Sometimes, one of them will start heading towards a planet like Earth or Mars. If it gets close enough, it will get caught by the planet's gravity and start circling it. This is called "orbiting."

When people on Earth know that an asteroid is going to transit a planet, they get very excited because it's a rare event. Astronomers will use telescopes to watch the transit, and even sometimes send special spacecraft to follow the asteroid and take pictures of it. This helps us learn more about how asteroids travel and what they are made of.

So, in a nutshell, a transit of an asteroid is when it comes really close to one of our planet friends and we get to watch it pass in front of them like we're in a play.