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How was Pallas discovered?

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Illustration showing a massive asteroid above a city map with a dinosaur silhouette for scale, highlighting the asteroid's size compared to major urban areas. — Asteroid This rock would take out more than just a *T. rex*.

Pallas was discovered on March 28, 1802, by the German astronomer and physician Wilhelm Olbers.12

Its discovery occurred during a period of intense interest in finding a "missing" planet between Mars and Jupiter, a search motivated by Bode’s law. Following the discovery of Ceres in 1801, the identification of Pallas—the second asteroid to be found—led astronomers to hypothesize that these objects were the shattered remnants of a larger planet that had once occupied that region of the solar system.132

Named after the Greek goddess Pallas Athena, the asteroid was identified by Olbers while he was actively participating in the systematic search for planetary bodies in the asteroid belt.124