# Hygiea

*In the Solar System*

The fourth-largest asteroid and the biggest of the dark carbon-rich kind, here for its size. In 2019 the VLT resolved it into a disc and found it round - round enough that it may qualify as a dwarf planet, which would make it the smallest known, and the argument is still open. Nothing has visited it. It is the parent of a family of thousands of fragments left over from whatever hit it.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Radius | 217 km |
| Around the equator | 1,360 km |
| From the Sun | 478,717,322 km (-149,994 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 611,978,843 km (-1,061,553 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 34 min |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=hygiea
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/hygiea/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt