Asteroid/Legends

"That wasn't a laser blast! Something hit us!"

- Han Solo

An asteroid was a solid object orbiting a star that was smaller than a planet, ranging from dozens of meters to hundreds of kilometers in size. Asteroids were often found in an asteroid belt within a star system. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jango Fett had a dogfight in an asteroid field near Geonosis. The asteroids resulted in Kenobi fooling Jango into thinking he had destroyed the Jedi Knight. During the Galactic Civil War, Han Solo escaped from Death Squadron by flying into the Hoth asteroid field.

Smaller versions of asteroids were meteoroids, which became meteors or meteor showers in atmospheres, and meteorites on impact with planets.

Clouds of asteroids sometimes appeared as a result of the crash of two planets, as in the outer cloud of Lamaro system known as The Reef. This cloud limited the access to the inner system through hyperspace unless exact coordinates were provided, as traveling through the cloud while on hyperspace could cause an anomaly.

Asteroids could be used as military bases of operations; such was the case with the Imperial Maw Installation and the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force base in the Crustai system.

Behind the scenes
In Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, at least one potato was used to portray the asteroids of the Hoth asteroid field.