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OrbitStudio / Vesta landmarks / Rheasilvia

Rheasilvia

The impact basin that covers most of Vesta's southern hemisphere, about 500 kilometers wide on a body about 525 kilometers across on average. It is too wide for one model; its central peak, more than twice as high as Mount Everest, is not.

SizeAbout 450 to 500 km across, about 19 km deep
Central peakAbout 180 km wide, 20 to 25 km high
Coordinates71.95° S, 86.3° E (the basin); the entry, on the central peak: 70.0° S, 86.3° E
TypeImpact basin
AgeAbout 1 to 3.6 billion years, by crater counts, depending on the method
Named afterRhea Silvia, the Vestal Virgin who in Roman legend was the mother of Romulus and Remus; adopted by the IAU in 2011
Elevation sourceDawn shape model (JPL), 50 m grid

Coordinates, the 450 km size and name from the IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature; the 500 km, the depth and Veneneia from Schenk et al. 2012 in Science; the central peak from NASA's Dawn image release; the age and the troughs from Williams et al. 2014. Coordinates are the center point OrbitStudio uses for this destination.

Where is Rheasilvia on Vesta?

Around the south pole: its center is at 71.95° south, 86.3° east. The basin is so large that it flattened Vesta's southern hemisphere, and it cut across an older basin of about 400 kilometers, Veneneia, whose remains Schenk et al. traced beneath it. The International Astronomical Union named it in 2011 after Rhea Silvia, the Vestal Virgin who in Roman legend was the mother of Romulus and Remus.

How tall is Rheasilvia's central peak?

NASA puts the central mountain at about 180 kilometers wide and 20 to 25 kilometers tall, more than twice the height of Mount Everest above sea level; cliffs 15 to 20 kilometers high line parts of the basin's edge. In the elevation data OrbitStudio builds from, Vesta's highest point, 21.6 kilometers above its reference ellipsoid, is on Rheasilvia's rim, and its lowest, 19.9 kilometers below, is on the basin floor. Crater counts put the impact between about 1 and 3.6 billion years ago, depending on how the counts are turned into ages.

What does Rheasilvia look like as a 3D print?

A broad dome, not a spire. The basin is too wide to frame whole: a selection that size around the pole cannot be read square. Its entry frames the central peak at about 110 kilometers, and on a model 200 millimeters across the relief in that view comes out at about 42 millimeters at true scale. The peak rises gently over many kilometers, so it prints as a high, rounded mass; a puzzle cover sits high on it, and the generator says so.

Print Rheasilvia in OrbitStudio Watch how it works · 1:12

What is OrbitStudio?

OrbitStudio turns real elevation data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region of Vesta on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get ready-to-print files with terrain and borders already separated and colored. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from the shape model NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory made from Dawn's images, on a 50-meter grid.

Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model — STL files and pre-colored 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer — takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The generator covers the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Ceres, Pluto and Charon too.

Other landmarks

The Snowman Marcia Divalia Fossae All Vesta landmarks

The night sky, too

OrbitStudio Sky, the night-sky tool, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.