Asteroid
The dwarf planet Ceres is by far the largest asteroid, with a diameter of . The next largest are 4 Vesta and 2 Pallas, both with diameters of just over . Vesta is the only main-belt asteroid that can, on occasion, be visible to the naked eye. On some rare occasions, a near-Earth asteroid may briefly become visible without technical aid; see 99942 Apophis.
List of instrument-resolved minor planets
Because of their distance from Earth and their small dimension, minor planets such as asteroids represent a challenge for astronomical instruments to resolve. Even two of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, 2 Pallas and 4 Vesta, have maximum angular diameters of less than an arcsecond. With a ground-based optical telescope, resolution of these objects through the Earth's thick atmosphere can require techniques such as speckle interferometry or adaptive optics.