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PIA17467: Asteroid or Mini-Planet? Hubble Maps the Ancient Surface of Vesta
This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope series of 24 images showing the full 5.34-hour rotation of the 325-mile diameter (525 kilometer) asteroid Vesta.
 Target Name:  Vesta
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Hubble Space Telescope 
 Instrument:  WFPC2 
 Product Size:  800 x 525 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Space Telescope Science Institute 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA17467.tif (420.6 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA17467.jpg (27.13 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope series of 24 images showing the full 5.34-hour rotation of the 325-mile diameter (525 kilometer) asteroid Vesta.

Hubble resolves features as small as 50 miles across, allowing astronomers to map Vesta's geologically diverse terrain. The surface is a complex record of Vesta's four billion-year history. Features include ancient lava flows, and a gigantic impact basin that is so deep, it exposes the asteroid's subsurface, or mantle.

This sequence was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 between November 28 and December 1, 1994, when Vesta was at a distance of 156 million miles from Earth.

When combined with ground-based data, astronomers will be able to make the first geochemical map of Vesta's surface.

More information about asteroid Vesta is online at http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Image Credit:
NASA/STScI/Georgia Southern University

Image Addition Date:
2013-09-27