From Earth to the Main Asteroid Belt: The Path of Turin Astronomers in the Exploration of the Solar System

Through the two and half centuries of his activity, astronomers at Turin Astronomical Observatory have studied the various bodies of the Solar System: starting from the Earth by the geodetic campaign in the eighteenth century, then, thanks to the celestial mechanics, the Moon orbit in the 19th, and finally in the twentieth century, the minor bodies: asteroids and comets, both investigated for determining their classical astrometric parameters and physical structure—not to mention the discovery of some new members.