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Vesta is a curious asteroid in many ways. This is the only such object that can be seen with the naked eye. In terms of mass and size, Vesta surpasses most other known asteroids in the space between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. In terms of its parameters, it is even closer to those. Located in the Main Vesta, it refers to bodies formed approximately during the same period as the Earth, which means it can tell a lot about the distant past of our system.

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Vesta is an asteroid discovered during the search for a planet between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. According to the theory, the distribution of orbits in space around the Sun follows a certain pattern. All planets known at the beginning of the 19th century fit into this theory. The only exceptions were Jupiter and Mars. The huge space between them should have hidden an unknown planet. During her search, many elements of the Main Asteroid Belt were discovered.

Vesta was discovered in 1807 by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers. Another scientist, Carl Gauss, gave her the name of an ancient Roman goddess hearth and home. The name stuck and is still used today.

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After Ceres was classified as a dwarf planet, Vesta ranks second in size among asteroids after Pallas. Its parameters are 578x560x458 km. The noticeable asymmetry of the form does not allow Vesta to be classified as a dwarf planet. In terms of mass (2.59 * 10 20 kg), it is also ahead of Pallas, that is, in the Main Asteroid Belt, only Ceres surpasses it in this parameter.

Does the asteroid Vesta have an atmosphere?

It’s not for nothing that asteroids are classified as a separate class of cosmic bodies. They differ from planets in a number of parameters: size, shape, mass, and so on. Signs characteristic of an asteroid do not allow it to retain a gas shell. Therefore, the answer to the question “does the asteroid Vesta have an atmosphere” is negative. An extremely rarefied gas envelope exists on Ceres. Other bodies in the Main Belt cannot boast such a characteristic, like the asteroid Vesta. It has the atmosphere of Earth, Venus, Mars, gas giants and some satellites. Asteroids are too small for this.

How to see asteroid Vesta?

Due to its brightness, Vesta can be seen with the naked eye. Although it is smaller in size than Ceres and Pallas, it is characterized by greater reflectivity. Other asteroids cannot be seen from Earth without special equipment.

The best time to search for an asteroid in the sky is during opposition days, when it approaches the minimum distance to Earth. During these periods, its brightness increases to 5.1 m (the minimum value of this parameter is 8.5 m). The last time such a confrontation occurred was in April 2014.

Vesta approaches its minimum distance to our planet once every 3-4 years. Without a telescope, you can only notice it in good visibility conditions. However, it is no different from ordinary stars.

Movement

Vesta's orbit lies in the inner part of the Main Asteroid Belt. Its shape is only slightly elongated - it is an almost perfect circle. The orbit is characterized by a slight inclination to the ecliptic plane. Vesta completes one revolution around the Sun every 3.6 years. At the same time, the asteroid does not cross the orbit of our planet during its movement.

Automatic interplanetary station Dawn

In 2011, in July, Vesta passed the point of minimum distance to our planet. This period was used to study the asteroid in detail. Back in 2007, the AMC Dawn went to Vesta. The mission of the device is to study this asteroid, as well as the dwarf planet Ceres.

Dawn entered Vesta's circular orbit on July 16, 2011. By December 12, it had reached its minimum altitude above the asteroid. Among the tasks of the apparatus were measuring the gravitational field, determining the spectrum of neutrons and gamma quanta that appears when cosmic rays fall on the Vesta asteroid. Photos of the object began to arrive on Earth on December 13.

The Dawn spacecraft left the 2012 asteroid and headed towards Ceres. Today (December 2015) the device continues its work in orbit of the dwarf planet.

Sight

Vesta is an asteroid carefully “examined” by the Hubble telescope. The research was carried out in the 90s of the last century. Hubble studied the surface of the asteroid. The most impressive feature of the relief was the giant crater, later named Rheasilvia. The trace presumably left by the collision is characterized by a diameter of 460 km and a depth of 13 km. Scientists still cannot answer the question of how Vesta was able to survive such a blow.

The Dawn spacecraft also studied the condition of the crater. According to scientists, Rheasilvia was formed 1 billion years ago. The crater basin partially obscures the impact of another older impact, called the Veneneya crater. In the center of Reyasilvia there is a mountain 22 km high and 180 km in diameter. In terms of its parameters, it is ahead of the giant Olympus on Mars, previously considered the highest known mountain in solar system.

Scientists suggest that the material ejected during the impact served as material for the formation of objects of the Vesta family and class V asteroids.

Researchers are turning their attention to such objects because they can tell us a lot about the time when the Solar system was just forming. Vesta is an asteroid similar in composition to terrestrial planets. Most likely, its study will tell astronomers a lot about the distant past of our piece of the Galaxy.

In 2009, Robert McNaught opened Comet C/2009 R1, which is approaching the Earth, and in mid-June 2010, residents of the northern hemisphere will be able to see it with the naked eye.

Comet Morehouse(C/1908 R1) is a comet discovered in the USA in 1908, which was the first of the comets to begin to be actively studied using photography. Surprising changes were noticed in the structure of the tail. During the day of September 30, 1908, these changes occurred continuously. On October 1, the tail broke off and could no longer be observed visually, although a photograph taken on October 2 showed the presence of three tails. The rupture and subsequent growth of the tails occurred repeatedly.

Comet Tebbutt(C/1861 J1) - a bright comet visible to the naked eye, was discovered by an Australian amateur astronomer in 1861. The Earth passed through the comet's tail on June 30, 1861.

Comet Hyakutake(C/1996 B2) is a large comet that reached zero magnitude in brightness in March 1996 and produced a tail estimated to extend at least 7 degrees. Its apparent brightness is largely explained by its proximity to Earth - the comet passed from it at a distance of less than 15 million km. Its closest approach to the Sun is 0.23 AU, and its diameter is about 5 km.

Comet Humason(C/1961 R1) is a giant comet discovered in 1961. Its tails, despite being so far from the Sun, still extend 5 AU in length, an example of unusually high activity.

Comet McNaught(C/2006 P1), also known as the Great Comet of 2007, is a long-period comet discovered on August 7, 2006 by British-Australian astronomer Robert McNaught, becoming the brightest comet in 40 years. Residents of the northern hemisphere could easily observe it with the naked eye in January and February 2007. In January 2007, the comet's magnitude reached -6.0; the comet was visible everywhere in daylight, and the maximum tail length was 35 degrees.

There are many things in our solar system that revolve around the sun - that is, are in its orbit. The Earth revolves around the Sun in 365 days. Seven other planets also orbit the sun along with their moons, and along with them other gizmos, including asteroids and comets. But what exactly are asteroids and comets? Why do people confuse them? What fell - a star, an asteroid or a comet? How to explain to a child what a comet and an asteroid are and how they differ? Let's figure it out.

An asteroid is simply a rock orbiting the Sun. Asteroids are smaller than planets, but some of them can be very large. The largest, according to scientists, is Vesta - more than 550 kilometers in diameter. The smallest one ever studied was two meters.

There are 780,290 asteroids in our system, but not all of them are made of the same material. Scientists have divided them into three different groups depending on their composition - they can be metallic, rocky, or composed of rocks that are more like clay or contain silicon.

We're still trying to learn more about asteroids. The Japanese probe Hayabusa-2 arrived at the asteroid Ryugu. NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is on its way to another asteroid, Bennu. Each mission plans to take a sample from the asteroid's surface and bring dust and rocks back to Earth.

Hayabusa2 has already made many measurements on Ryugu. The spacecraft is circling the asteroid and has already sent three vehicles to the surface. One of the machines is a lander, which did not move much and explored the surface for 17 hours. Scientists on Earth are already examining the module's measurements to find out more about how the asteroid formed. The other two vehicles are much smaller and are designed to move across surfaces by jumping. They have been exploring the asteroid since September 21st.

Asteroids are cool.

But what is a comet?

There are much fewer known comets in the Solar System than asteroids - 3526.

A comet, unlike an asteroid, looks more like a dirty piece of ice than a rock. The middle of a comet, called the nucleus, is quite small and remains stationary as it passes through the outer reaches of the solar system. Comets tend to have orbits far from the Sun, where it is much colder than closer to Earth. Sometimes comets come close to the Sun in their orbits.

As the comet approaches the Sun, it heats up, the ice heats up and steam begins to flow, creating clouds of dust and gas that follow the comet's nucleus. This is a coma - the fluffy tail of a comet. As the comet moves, dust and gas are left behind, creating a tail that can stretch for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Closer to Earth, the tail appears as a bright stripe in the sky. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, it looks amazing. People all over the world have been observing comets for thousands of years.

In principle, we ourselves came close to comets. The Stardust mission flew through the tail of one of the comets and brought samples back to Earth in 2006. The Rosetta mission, which ended in 2016, captured more than 100,000 amazing images of the comet's surface.

Although several comets pass near Earth every year, many of them can only be seen through a telescope. When a comet has such a bright coma that you can see it with your own eyes, it is a real holiday.

This is the main difference between comets and asteroids - an asteroid is made of rocks or metals, while a comet is made of frozen material that melts as it approaches the Sun.

You can’t even imagine how many amazing things can be happening in our vast world at this very moment, but you can always look into history and see what unimaginable events have happened before. For example, there was a time when the Mississippi River in North America reversed its course and was moving in the opposite direction. However, this happened three times, and the truly stunning phenomena are those that still remain unique, those that actually happened only once in history and are unlikely to ever happen again!

Comet West, 1976

Comet West orbits our star with an approximate frequency of once every 250 thousand years. And just imagine how rare a chance the inhabitants of the Earth had in 1976, when they were able to see a celestial object as clearly as, say, Jupiter.

The strongest geomagnetic storm, 1859

Richard Carrington, an astronomer from Britain, recorded a flare on the Solonets on September 1, 1859, which caused an unusually powerful geomagnetic storm. The events led to the failure of all telegraph networks in Europe and North America, and people observed the northern lights all over the world, even over the Caribbean islands. Moreover, the glow was so bright that many residents woke up, thinking that it was already morning.

Black smallpox eradication, 1979

Black smallpox is a horrific disease that claims approximately 2 million lives every year. And so in 1967, humanity decided to set a cherished goal: to get rid of the terrible virus once and for all. Eradication took more than ten years, and in 1979 the disease was officially declared completely eradicated. Unfortunately, so far this disease is the only one from which people have managed to free themselves.

Get closer to Uranus and Neptune

Only two planets belong to the class of ice giants in our solar system - Uranus and Neptune. Thanks to the Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched in 1977, people were able to reach both ice giants, and this case is unique.

Capture of warships by cavalry, 1795

For the cavalry, together with the infantry, to capture a fleet of 14 battleships with 850 guns - this is simply impossible! However, something like this really happened - only once, of course. In January 1795, the winter in the Netherlands turned out to be frosty, which is why the Dutch fleet anchored near Amsterdam was literally frozen into ice-bound water. And the enterprising French took advantage of the opportunity to capture the enemy.

Revealing the underwater secrets of the Hebrides, 2013

In 2013, an unmanned underwater module was launched, which managed to descend into deep underwater ditches near the New Hebrides, stretching for 7 kilometers. During this expedition, man first saw the mysterious underwater world of deep-sea trenches.

The man who was cured of AIDS

In history, there is only one single case recorded when a person managed to completely recover from the immunodeficiency virus. Timothy Brown became such a person, who received bone marrow from a donor with a genetic mutation that makes immune cells resistant to infection. Complex treatment practically destroyed Timothy's immune system, but nevertheless, today he is HIV-negative.

Dry Niagara Falls, 1969

Niagara Falls is the most powerful in North America. However, in the summer of 1969 this could not exactly be said about him. Due to erosion control work, the falls remained completely dry for several months.

Hurricane in the South Atlantic

Strong storms are not uncommon in the North Atlantic, but hurricanes do not occur in the South Atlantic. With the exception of 2004, when Hurricane Katarina hit here, it is still considered the only tropical cyclone to visit the southern part of the Atlantic.

Beer flood, 1814

Thanks to the brewery on Tottenham Court Road, London residents in October 1814 had a real risk of literally drowning in beer. After all, then a tank exploded at the brewery and 1.5 million liters of the foamy drink rushed onto the street. The beer wave was so strong that it destroyed buildings. During the beer accident, 9 people died.

Comet West. Some comets can be seen only once in a lifetime, but in general, every generation has such a chance: for example, Halley's comet is shown to us once every 76 years. However, Comet West orbits the Sun with a frequency, according to scientists, once every 250 thousand years. This figure is not absolute, but in any case it indicates that the phenomenon occurs extremely rarely. In 1976, the inhabitants of the Earth had the chance to see Comet West with their own eyes: its apparent magnitude (i.e., a measure of brightness) reached -3. This means that it was visible better than Jupiter.

Carrington event, or the geomagnetic storm of 1859. British astronomer Richard Carrington observed solar flares on September 1, 1859, which led to the strongest geomagnetic storm in at least the last 500 years. The result was impressive: all telegraph networks in Europe and North America failed, and northern lights were observed all over the world, even over the Caribbean. The glow was so bright that many woke up believing it was morning. So, on the one hand, one can envy those who observed this beauty, on the other hand, weather-sensitive people can be glad that they did not have to experience this, because the type of weather was more than unfavorable.

Eradication of smallpox. In 1967, humanity set a goal: to forever get rid of smallpox, which claimed 2 million lives a year, while leaving the survivors disfigured. This took more than 10 years - the last case of smallpox was recorded in 1978, and in 1979 the disease was officially declared eradicated. To date, this is the only disease that people have managed to get rid of completely, once and for all.

Approach two ice giants. In our solar system, there are only two planets from the class of ice giants - that is, consisting of water, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide and rocks - Uranus and Neptune. In 1977, the Voyager 2 spacecraft was launched, which became the first and so far only one to reach Uranus (in 1986) and Neptune (in 1989). Thanks to Voyager 2, we know that Uranus's atmosphere is 85% hydrogen and 15% helium, with a boiling ocean 800 km away beneath the clouds. While traveling around Neptune, Voyager 2 spotted active geysers on one of its moons. By the way, it will soon be 40 years since Voyager 2 has been in flight.

Capture of warships by cavalry. Can you imagine cavalry in company with infantry capturing a fleet of 14 battleships with 850 guns and several merchant ships? And this happened! In January 1795, a Dutch fleet was anchored near Amsterdam. The winters were cold, the sea was covered with ice, and the ships were literally frozen. This helped the enterprising French capture the enemy.

Underwater secrets of the Hebrides. Man has explored almost the entire surface of the Earth, with the exception of the ocean floor. In 2013, an unmanned underwater module descended into deep underwater ditches near the New Hebrides. Long, trench-like canals stretch for 7 km off the coast of New Zealand. The expedition gave man the first look at the underwater world of deep-sea trenches.

A person completely cured of AIDS. The human immunodeficiency virus has already killed 35 million people, 36.7 million live with the disease, and only one managed to get rid of the disease completely - Timothy Brown. This success was achieved thanks to a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a genetic mutation that makes immune cells resistant to infection. The course of treatment was incredibly difficult and practically destroyed the patient's immune system, but today Timothy Brown is HIV negative. We hope that this item will remain on our list for a short time as an isolated case.

Dry Niagara Falls. Every second, 567 thousand liters of water crashes down from Niagara. But if you had arrived there in the summer of 1969, you would not have seen any grandiose cascades of water: as a result of erosion control work, the waterfall became dry for several months. True, this did not reduce tourist interest at all: in just the first dry weekend, almost 90 thousand people came to Niagara Falls. Imagine - some even managed to walk along a dry river bed!

Hurricane in the South Atlantic. Severe storms are not uncommon in the North Atlantic, with an average of 12 tropical storms and 6 hurricanes occurring in this area per year. Since 1974, storms have also been observed in the South Atlantic, although much less frequently. But at some point, one of them turned into a powerful and destructive hurricane, named Katarina. A South Atlantic tropical cyclone passed along the coast of Brazil in 2004, destroying everything in its path. Thanks to timely evacuation, mass casualties were avoided, but the destruction was significant. Today, Katarina is considered the only hurricane to visit the South Atlantic.

Beer flood.“Tonu-u! Someone save me! I’m dying in Zhiguli beer…” - the situation with the cunning mouse from Sergei Mikhalkov’s fable, which fell into a barrel of beer, was familiar to residents of London at the beginning of the 19th century. In October 1814, a beer tank exploded at the brewery on Tottenham Court Road, causing a chain reaction in other tanks: as a result, 1.5 million liters of excellent foamy drink poured into the street. The beer wave tore down walls and destroyed buildings. As a result of the beer flood, 9 people died - 8 of them choked, and one died as a result of alcohol poisoning. The incident was declared a natural disaster, and the victims were never able to recover money from the unfortunate manufacturer.