Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2022

44 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022 ASTRO PUBLISHING VLT images some of the biggest asteroids in our Solar System by ESO - Bárbara Ferreira T hese images have been captured with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope as part of a programme that surveyed 42 of the largest asteroids in our Solar System. They show Ceres and Vesta, the two largest objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, approximately 940 and 520 kilometres in diameter. These two asteroids are also the two most massive in the sample. [ESO/Vernazza et al./MIS- TRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS)] U sing the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Tele- scope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, as- tronomers have imaged 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. Never before had such a large group of asteroids been imaged so sharply. The observations reveal a wide range of peculiar shapes, from spherical to dog-bone, and are helping as- tronomers trace the origins of the asteroids in our Solar System. The detailed images of these 42 objects are a leap forward in exploring as- teroids, made possible thanks to ground-based telescopes, and con- tribute to answering the ultimate