Vesta asteroid. Coloured image of the Vesta asteroid based on Hubble Space Telescope data. The image is colour-coded to show elevation, from 12 kilome

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Vesta asteroid. Coloured image of the Vesta asteroid based on Hubble Space Telescope data. The image is colour-coded to show elevation, from 12 kilometres (km) below average (black), through blue, green, yellow and red to 12 km above average (white). The asteroid's south pole (lower centre) has a 456 km-wide impact crater with a central \bull's eye\" peak, suggesting that it has experi- enced a major collision with a large object. Vesta orbits the Sun between the orbits of Mars & Jupit- er at an average distance of 353 million km ( times Earth's orbital radius). It is the third largest asteroid, being about 538 km across."

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Size: 4847px × 3999px
Photo credit: © NASA/ESA/STSCI/B.ZELLNER, GSU/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: asteroid, astronomy, colour-coded, cosmology, vesta