Sylvia and Lamberta

These images have been captured with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope as part of a programme that surveyed 42 of the largest asteroids in our Solar System. They show two of the least dense asteroids imaged, Sylvia and Lamberta, which have a density of about 1.3 grammes per cubic centimetre, approximately the density of coal.