Astronomy Picture of the Week – Vesta from Orbit by Dawn Spacecraft
This photo of Vesta was taken by the Dawn spacecraft from the asteroid’s orbit on July 17. Vesta is a large asteroid with a mean diameter of about 530 kilometers. It is the second most massive object in the asteroid belt after Ceres and consists of about 9% of all the belt’s mass. It is also the brightest asteroid because it orbits much closer to the Sun than Ceres. Its average distance from the sun is 2.361 AU. Dawn will study the asteroid for the next year and we hope for lots of interesting discoveries.
Image credit: Dawn spacecraft (NASA/JPL)
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Paul Tomaszewski
Paul Tomaszewski is a science & tech writer as well as a programmer and entrepreneur. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of CosmoBC. He has a degree in computer science from John Abbott College, a bachelor's degree in technology from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, and completed some business and economics classes at Concordia University in Montreal. In his spare time he is an amateur astronomer and enjoys reading or watching science-fiction. You can follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.
5 Comments
jom
I’ve always been interested on how the universe actually works.. and this photo is absolutely amazing! thanks so much for sharing it
Lodeven
Wonderful post, i feel so good that i found this article, honestly it is the first time i heard about NASA, thank you for sharing with us….
Paul Tomaszewski
Really? Never heard of NASA before? Where did you live???
Annabell Megan
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Olivia
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