Posted on by vissiniti

The Largest Objects in the Asteroid Belt

A graphic showing the 22 largest objects in the asteroid belt by decreasing size, and roughly to scale, from 1 Ceres (diameter 940 km) to 7 Iris (diameter 214 km).

Four of those shown are direct images (two from orbit, two from Earth); the remainder are constructed from adaptive-optics images, optical light curves and shape models, as set out in the image footer.

All sources are also shown in the footer. If you use the graphic, make sure you credit the sources.

See also asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft.

The largest asteroid belt objects (asteroids and dwarf planets) - the largest asteroids (twenty two).
Image credits: [1, 4] NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA; [2] ESO/Marsset et al (2020)/MISTRAL (ONERA/CNRS); [3] Baliunas et al (2003); [7, 704] ESO/Hanuš et al (2019, 2020); [10] ESO/Vernazza et al (2020)/MISTRAL (ONERA/CNRS); [52] Merline et al (2013); [15, 65, 511] Viikinkoski et al (2018)/KeckII/AIDA/ADAM/DAMIT; [16, 324] ESO/LAM/Vernazza et al; [19, 45, 48, 88, 532] DAMIT/Ďurech et al (2010); [31] Yang et al (2020); [87] Carry et al (2019); [451] Michalowski et al (2005); [624] Marchis et al (2014).

There are two detailed images from orbit [1, 4], two direct images from Earth [3, 624], 12 images constructed from adaptive-optics images and optical light curves [2, 7, 10, 15, 16, 31, 52, 65, 87, 324, 511, 704], and six shape models from light curves [19, 45, 48, 88, 451, 532].