Rheasilvia central peak, Vesta

Filed under pretty pictures, amateur image processing, asteroids, asteroid 4 Vesta, Dawn

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Approximately true color image of the south polar mountain in center of the crater Rheasilvia. Images 0005756, 0005761, 0005755. Taken on August 20, 2011 from an altitude of 2713 kilometers and with a resolution of 258 meters per pixel.

NASA / JPL / MPS / DLR / IDA / Daniel Macháček

Copyright holder: Daniel Macháček

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about August 20, 2011

Comments:

allycool: 12/31/2012 03:48 CST

HOW COME THE STARS ARE NOT THERE ????????

Emily Lakdawalla: 01/09/2013 02:57 CST

Vesta's surface is very bright, so Dawn used a short exposure to capture the image. The exposure was not long enough for dim stars to show up in the background. It's the same reason you don't see stars in the sky in Apollo photos from the surface of the Moon.