Vesta asteroid. Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Vesta. The asteroid's south pole (lo- wer centre) has been flattened,suggesting that it has experienced a major impact with another object in the past. Vesta orbits the Sun between the orbits of Mars & Jupiter at an average distance of 353 million kilometres (2.36 times the radius of Earth's orbit). It is the third largest asteroid,having a diameter of about 538 kilometres. Under favourable conditions,it is the only asteroid visible to the naked eye. Image taken by Hubble at a distance of 176 million kilometres in May 1996; the image resolution is 9.6 kilometres | |
Licence : | Droits gérés |
Crédit: | Science Photo Library / B.ZELLNER, GSU / STSCI / ESA / NASA |
Taille de l’image : | 4742 px × 3704 px |
Model Release : | Non requis |
Property Release : | Non requis |
Restrictions : | - |