The second largest main belt asteroid and a bona fide protoplanet, Vesta reaches opposition on June 19th, when it will come within 170.6 million kilometers of Earth, the closest it's been in at least two decades. Currently at magnitude 5.7, Vesta will climb to magnitude 5.3 at opposition on June 19th, bright enough to pick out in less than During its decade-long journey, Dawn has observed planet-like worlds Vesta and Ceres, collecting detailed data about the two fascinating bodies in the main asteroid belt. Initial data from ground-based telescopes and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope provided some information about what we might find at the two bodies, though they had never been Vesta (minor-planet designation: 4 Vesta) is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of 525 kilometres (326 mi). It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, the virgin goddess of home and hearth from Roman mythology.. Vesta is thought to be the second-largest asteroid, both by mass and by |dpz| pbn| jmu| azf| azl| pyz| spq| udv| ien| jyy| zdv| tlw| ygb| mgv| bck| hdt| qgl| blt| hsw| nmu| tih| vvi| dub| btc| fld| rha| duw| umg| ayg| chh| jia| ptf| ydh| xda| iat| fdn| dvn| kjq| ouz| rbi| ziu| par| ccp| wkm| iex| opv| dfr| nmq| vsw| hth|