Caption: A collage image showing the comparative sizes of 9 asteroids:

1. 4 Vesta ⚶: Vesta is the 2nd largest asteroids. The largest asteroid 1 Ceres ⚳ (also considered a dwarf planet) is NOT shown in the image.
2. 21 Lutetia: From Lutetia down, the shown asteroids are too small to have even been approximately spherized by self-gravity.
3. 253 Mathilde.
4. 243 Ida.
5. Dactyl (about 1.5 km), the moon of 243 Ida: Barely visible in the image.
6. 433 Eros.
7. 951 Gaspra.
8. 2867 Steins.
9. 25143_Itokawa: Barely visible in the image.

Features:

1. The Vesta image is from the Dawn spacecraft (2007--2018) that reached Vesta on 2011 Jul16.

2. Vesta has dimensions 578 X 560 X 458 km with a mean diameter (of some kind) of 529 km.

3. Vesta shows evidence of primordial-radiogenic heat geology (see also Wikipedia: Earth's internal heat budget: Radiogenic heat: Primordial heat) in its early days: e.g., some of its crust is basalt which probably formed from lava from early volcanism.

4. Vesta is considered to be protoplanet since it has undergone chemical differentiation. Lutetia has some protoplanet features.

5. The astronomers started running short long ago of mythological persons like Eros (who got 433 Eros) for naming asteroids after.

   So they started naming them after real people: e.g., 253 Mathilde after Mathilde Leowy (wife of astronomer Maurice Loewy (1833--1907)) and 5535 Annefrank after Anne Frank (1929--1945).

6. See also Asteroid videos all below (local link / general link: asteroid_videos_all.html).

   EOF