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Artist's Concept of Dawn Thrusting

Artist's Concept of Dawn Thrusting
Artist's Concept of Dawn Thrusting This is an artist’s concept of Dawn. The two wings of solar cells make the spacecraft very large. Nevertheless, when at conjunction, it will be so far away that it will appear comparable to the width of a human hair at a distance of more than 1,000 miles (2,000 kilometers). In other words, the ship is much too far for your eyes to see. It would be better to use your mind’s eye. Even the most powerful telescopes could not detect the spacecraft. For that matter, observing Ceres with a telescope would be difficult at this range. Sunlight makes it impossible, but even if we ignore the overwhelming glare, the dwarf planet would appear about as large as a soccer ball seen from 81 miles (130 kilometers.) It’s a good thing we have a spacecraft there to examine it in such great detail. NASA / JPL-Caltech