t's the type of picture that gives you goose bumps because you are simply blown away by the magnitude of what it is you are seeing.

Nasa has just released an image of Vesta, the brightest and largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, and it is both a spectacular and frightening sight to behold.

The image was taken by the Dawn spacecraft, which was 9,900 miles away from the asteroid, whose diameter stretches 330 miles.

The spacecraft will now spend a year orbiting Vesta, during which time it will take a lot of detailed images to be studied by scientists back on Earth and be archived in a photobook.

Floating a mere 117 miles away from planet Earth, Vesta is of particular interest to Nasa and scientists as it is believed to be one example of some of the oldest material in the solar system, which could reveal fascinating facts about how life in the cosmos began.

Christopher Russell, Dawn principal investigator from the University of California, Los Angeles, said: "We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system.

"This region of space has been ignored for far too long."