Posted on by vissiniti

The Largest Objects in the Asteroid Belt

Needing to understand the comparative size of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, I decided to compile a graphic showing as many objects as I had the patience to find. So far, I’ve managed the first twenty two.

The images are roughly to scale. Only four are direct images, the rest are constructed from adaptive-optics images, optical light curves and shape models, as detailed in the image footer. I plan to keep adding more images until they get too small to see in the graphic.

Feel free to use it, just ensure you credit all image sources shown at the bottom of the graphic. See also my other graphics including asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft.

So here are the twenty two largest objects in the asteroid belt:

The 22 largest objects in the asteroid belt (asteroids and dwarf planets)
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].