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2 Pallas

Adapted from Wikipedia · Explorer experience

An image of the asteroid Pallas, showing its cratered surface and unique topological features as captured by the Very Large Telescope.

What is 2 Pallas?

2 Pallas is a very big space rock. It is one of the biggest objects in the Solar System. It was the second asteroid ever found. Scientists think it might be a piece left over from when planets were made.

Where is 2 Pallas?

Pallas lives in the asteroid belt. The asteroid belt is a place between Mars and Jupiter full of many small rocks. Pallas moves around the Sun in a tilted path. Sometimes it gets very close to bright stars, like Sirius.

Why Do People Know About 2 Pallas?

People know about Pallas because it was discovered a long time ago, in 1802. An astronomer named Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers found it. At first, people thought it was a planet! Now we know it is an asteroid. Pallas is very big—it is about three-quarters the size of 4 Vesta and makes up around 7% of all the material in the asteroid belt.

Fun Fact

Pallas is the third-largest asteroid in our solar system. It is a little smaller than Vesta but still very big. From Pallas, we can sometimes see planets like Earth passing in front of the Sun!

Images

Diagram showing the orbit path of asteroid 2 Pallas in our solar system as of January 2018.
The Four Largest Asteroids in Our Solar System: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea
Artist's impression of potential dwarf planets and celestial bodies in our solar system.
A colorful montage showing the planets of our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth with its Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Each planet is shown to scale relative to the others.
Historical astronomical symbols for the planets Ceres and Pallas from 1802.
Animation showing the orbit path of the asteroid Pallas in our solar system.
An image of the asteroid 2 Pallas captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007.

Related articles

Solar System
Asteroid
Asteroid belt
Mars
Jupiter
Sun

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on 2 Pallas, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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