On this day in space: March 29, 1807: Heinrich Olbers discovers asteroid Vesta

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On March 29, 1807, the German astronomer Heinrich Olbers discovered the asteroid Vesta.

On March 29, 1807, the German astronomer Heinrich Olbers discovered the asteroid Vesta. Vesta is the second-largest body in the asteroid belt and is surpassed in size only by the dwarf planet Ceres.

a large gray rocky body is set against the blackness of space.

Asteroid Vesta, as seen in natural color using the data collected by NASA's Dawn probe in 2011, was discovered by Heinrich Olbers on March 29, 1807. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/MPS/DLR/IDA/Björn Jónsson)

Vesta was the fourth object to be discovered in the region between Mars and Jupiter, which we now know as the asteroid belt.

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Olbers and other astronomers thought the asteroid belt might be the remains of a hypothetical planet that was either smashed to pieces by a collision or ripped apart by Jupiter's gravity.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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