Saturn spent 2018 in the constellation Sagittarius, unusually bright as it always is here because its rings are about as wide open as they can be and therefore offering a greater surface area to reflect light.  This evening, Saturn is at magnitude +0.08, while Vesta checks in at magnitude +5.75, by far brighter that any other asteroid, or minor planet, can get.  Unannotated image

This image was acquired with a Nikon D40, which has an APS-C sensor, so when paired with my old Vivitar zoom lens set to 28 mm, the size of the field of view is equivalent to that of a camera with a full-frame sensor using a 42 mm lens.

Vesta is almost exactly the same magnitude that Uranus is at its opposition, so a comparison of the two is interesting: Vesta is 175,000,000 km from Earth at opposition with a diameter of 530 km. Uranus is 2,352,780,000 km away from us at opposition and has a diameter of 51,118 km.  So we see that Uranus is 100 times larger but also 13.44 times farther away.  Another factor to be considered here is the albedo, or reflectivity, of the bodies ~ Uranus' albedo is 0.488, while Vesta's is only slightly less at 0.423.

Vesta's opposition on June 22, 2018 was one of the brightest in recent years since it reached a magnitude of +5.30, almost the maximum which it can achieve.