See other posts from August 2011

Fabulous Dawn Vesta images and rotation movie!!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2011/08/01 11:58 CDT

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Even as I write this there is a press briefing taking place where the Dawn team is unveiling a whole new world. Now that Dawn's close enough, we're seeing absolutely spectacular detail, and Vesta's been revealed to have tremendous diversity across its surface. As usual it'll probably take me a while to bring together all the new information, so as a stopgap I'm going to post an awesome image and a rotation movie. You can see more images and movies here. Stay tuned for a fuller report!

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

Vesta, a whole new world

Dawn obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on July 24, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 5,200 kilometers.