Vesta

Vesta is the brightest asteroid there is — on a really dark night you can just see it without a telescope! It is about as wide as Portugal is long.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there

What it is

Second-biggest asteroid belt object, layered like a mini-planet, not quite round so classed as an asteroid not dwarf planet.

Asteroid: Rock or metal left over from building the planets. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find Vesta

Its position moves, so there is no fixed place on a map to point at. The Planetarium works out where it is for your own place and date.

Show me Vesta in tonight's sky

What you will really see

With binoculars

Binoculars find it, especially braced against a wall or a fence — it stays a point of light, but now you know which point.

Through a small telescope

A slow-moving 'star' — come back the next night and it has crept along.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope

🖨️ A sheet to print for this

🖨️ Print a sheet and go and look

🖨️ Sheet to take outside →

Worth knowing about Vesta

Vesta is about 1/24 the size of Earth — but still the second-biggest object in the asteroid belt. In weight, extremely light compared to Earth — about 1/23,000th. About 2.4 times Earth's distance from the Sun. Sunlight takes 20 minutes to reach Vesta — on average, because that distance changes as it goes round. Its year: about as long as going from starting first grade to finishing most of fourth grade. Its day: 5.34 hours.

Its surface: Layered like a mini-planet (crust, mantle, maybe small core) — often called a 'protoplanet' because it almost became a real planet.
The machines we sent: NASA's Dawn orbited Vesta 2011-2012 before moving on to Ceres.
What makes it worth knowing: To be a dwarf planet, an object has to be round from its own gravity (hydrostatic equilibrium). Vesta comes close, but a huge ancient impact near its south pole knocked off a chunk and left it slightly lumpy and egg-shaped — that's exactly why Ceres counts as a dwarf planet while Vesta stays classified as 'just' an asteroid.

How did anyone measure the Earth in the first place?

The numbers

Across	525 km
Distance from the Sun, on average	2.36 AU ~353 million km · sunlight takes 20 minutes
Once round its orbit	3.6 Earth years
One day there	5.3 hours

What it belongs to

☀️ Everything the Sun holds, in one place 📖 How the solar system fits together

Then go outside

Clear tonight? The Planetarium will show you what is worth a look. Then just go out.

🌙 Plan an evening outside 🌌 Everything else in the sky