This agrees well with the reality, except for the gap where 2.8 should be. However, it was very small, and did not show a disc in the telescopes of the day. The name has stuck, and the first was called Ceres. Pallas, Juno, and Vesta were found in the next few years, and , by 1980 several thousand were known. Vesta is the only one visible with the naked eye, at magnitude5.7.
Good eyesight reaches down to mag.
Sometimes asteroids are found in pairs or groups, and sometimes they collide and break up, leaving dust clouds which generate meteor showers if we cross them . These are frequently the burnt out remains of comets, as the European Giotto probe showed at Halley's Comet in 1986. Asteroids, considered by some astronomers as of little interest, have been of vital relevance to Earth since the beginning, and will be even more so in the future. Some small carbonaceous Near Earth asteroids are believed to be the remains of comets which have blown off their gases and water after several trips around the sun, so this discussion is equally relevant to comets. In early days, some scientists believe, much of the water of the oceans, and the complex chemicals from which life originated, were delivered here free of charge by incoming planets and asteroids.