NASA’s Dawn is giving people on Earth a look at the stunning details on the dwarf planet Ceres.
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The images, available in the gallery below at a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel, are said to be the closest and most detailed views of the dwarf planet so far. Its perimeter is sharply defined, with nearly no accumulated debris at the base of the brightly streaked slope. Dawn is now orbiting Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, 915 miles above its surface.
Dawn has been orbiting Ceres since March and will continue studying the dwarf planet through June 2016.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA Ceres’ four-mile tall mountain is seen toward the center right of this photograph, taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on August 19, 2015.
“Dawn is performing flawlessly in this new orbit as it conducts its ambitious exploration”.
The dwarf planet Ceres is best known for its mysterious white spots (which could be either ice or salt, and remain TBD) but those aren’t its only cool features.
“The spacecraft’s view is now three times as sharp as in its previous mapping orbit, revealing exciting new details of this intriguing dwarf planet”, explains Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director.
Dawn will spend the next two months mapping Ceres’ surface from its current elevation, according to NASA.
Ceres’ unusual conical mountain reaches 4 miles (6 kilometers) high. Gaue is a Germanic goddess to whom offerings are made in harvesting rye. Before making it to Ceres, Dawn studied the asteroid Vesta, which is also located in the asteroid belt, making it the first spacecraft to orbit two distinct solar system bodies.
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This extensive imaging allows scientists to model the surface in 3D, and instruments on board the spacecraft are collecting information about the distribution and composition of materials on Ceres’ surface. Dawn also spied a smaller mountain ridge, near the center of Urvara crater.
