4 Vesta
Videos
Vesta is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of 525 kilometres. It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is na
True color image of Vesta taken by Dawn. The massive Rheasilvia Crater dominates Vesta's south pole.
Vesta, Ceres, and the Moon with sizes shown to scale
SPHERE image is shown on the left, with a synthetic view derived from Dawn images shown on the right for comparison.
Claudia crater (indicated by the arrow at the bottom of the closeup image at right) defines the prime meridian in the Dawn/NASA coordinate system.
Asteroid
Videos
An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter. Asteroids are
A composite image, to the same scale, of the asteroids imaged at high resolution prior to 2012. They are, from largest to smallest: 4 Vesta, 21 Lutetia, 253 Mathilde, 243 Ida and its moon Dactyl, 433 Eros, 951 Gaspra, 2867 Šteins, 25143 Itokawa.
Giuseppe Velasquez, Giuseppe Piazzi and Ceres, oil on canvas, c. 1803
2013 EC, shown here in radar images, has a provisional designation