Episode 2 of 2
Discovery of Vesta
- When
- 29 March 1807
- Where
- Bremen
Olbers discovered the asteroid Vesta in the constellation Virgo on 29 March 1807, five years after finding Pallas.
Olbers commenced his search in 1802. On 29 March 1807, he discovered Vesta in the constellation Virgo. This was a coincidence, as Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta are not fragments of a larger body. Vesta is thought to be the second-largest asteroid, both by mass and by volume, after the dwarf planet Ceres.
Sources
- Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-29
- 4 Vesta Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-02
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.