Asteroids - Vesta

The Asteroid 4 Vesta imaged from our Backyard on 20-01-2017 using my Canon 600D DSLR and EOS 18-55mm lens at f=45, all mounted on a Star Adventurer. 11x2min lights, 5x darks and 10 flats stacked using DeepskyStacker software.

My first attempt at imaging an asteroid on the 20th January 2017 using my Canon 600D DSLR with EOS 18-55mm lens at f=45mm and ISO800 -  all mounted on a Star Adventurer. The Asteroid Vesta on the border between Cancer and Gemini. Image created from a stack of 11x 2min lights in DeepSkyStacker.

Jim T on SGL used his imaging rig to image Vesta and kindly confirmed that the speck of light on my widefield image was probably Vesta.

Finally, I checked that I had identified the asteroid correctly by imaging the same area of sky on the 24th Jan  and determined that the small dot had moved against the fixed backdrop of stars. I put together a GIF using the image from the 20th and 24th.

All round quite pleased with this first for me.

The small dim blue dot, lower left on the above images, is 4 Vesta moving between its locations on the 20th and 24th Jan. The asteroid is moving diagonally upwards from Cancer towards Gemini.

4 Vesta Image taken by the Dawn Spacecraft -  Credit: By NASA / JPL / MPS / DLR / IDA / Björn Jónsson - https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/9-small-bodies/2013/20130819_vesta_rgb_20110724_0835.png, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49833767

Vesta, minor-planet designation 4 Vesta, is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of 525 kilometres (326 mi)^,  It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, the virgin goddess of home and hearth from Roman mythology.
Vesta is the second-most-massive and second-largest body in the asteroid belt after the dwarf planet Ceres, and it contributes an estimated 9% of the mass of the asteroid belt.  It is slightly larger than Pallas, though significantly more massive. Vesta is the last remaining rocky protoplanet (with a differentiated interior) of the kind that formed the terrestrial planets. Numerous fragments of Vesta were ejected by collisions one and two billion years ago that left two enormous craters occupying much of Vesta's southern hemisphere. Debris from these events has fallen to Earth as howardite–eucrite–diogenite (HED) meteorites, which have been a rich source of information about Vesta.

Vesta is the brightest asteroid visible from Earth. Its maximum distance from the Sun is slightly greater than the minimum distance of Ceres from the Sun, though its orbit lies entirely within that of Ceres.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Vesta on 16 July 2011 for a one-year exploration and left orbit on 5 September 2012^] en route to its final destination, Ceres. Researchers continue to examine data collected by Dawn for additional insights into the formation and history of Vesta^{. 
Credit: Wikipedia}

Some meteorites found on earth have been attributed as originating from the asteroid 4 Vesta. I have considered buying a very small piece of such exotic meteorites as small samples are surprisingly inexpensive,

Credit: University of Tennessee