The South Pole of Asteroid Vesta
			
		
		
		
			What created the circular structure around the south pole of asteroid Vesta?
Pictured above, the bottom of the second largest object in the asteroid belt 
was recently imaged for the first time by the robotic 
Dawn satellite that arrived last month.
A close inspection of the 260-meter resolution image shows not only hills and 
craters and 
cliffs and 
more craters, but ragged circular features that cover most of the lower right of the 500-kilometer sized object.
Early speculation posits that the structure might have been created by a 
collision and coalescence with a smaller asteroid.
Alternatively, the features might have originated in an 
internal process soon after the asteroid formed.
New clues might come in the next few months as 
Dawn spirals down toward the rocky world and obtains images of increasingly high resolution.