Vesta Rocks.

These colorful images are of thin slices of meteorites viewed through a polarizing microscope. Part of the group classified as HED (Howardite, Eucrite, Diogenite) meteorites for their mineral content, they likely fell to Earth from 4 Vesta , the mainbelt asteroid currently being explored by NASA's Dawn spacecraft . Why are they thought to be from Vesta? Because the HED meteorites have visible and infrared spectra that match the spectrum of that small world . The hypothesis of their origin on Vesta is also consistent with data from Dawn's ongoing observations. Excavated by impacts , the diogenites shown here would have originated deep within the crust of Vesta. Similar rocks are also found in the lower crust of planet Earth. A sample scale is indicated by the white bars, each 2 millimeters long.

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