A Visit to Asteroid Vesta

Hubble's View

In 1997, the Hubble Space telescope, in orbit around Earth, snapped some images of Vesta.

Hubble is too far from Vesta to capture a clear picture, but the images did indicate a large crater in the southern hemisphere. At the time, scientists thought that this crater was the result of a large collision during the formation of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago.

Click the play button to view a sequence of images from Hubble that shows Vesta rotating.


Credit: NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (University of Maryland, College Park), and G. Bacon (STScI)