Vinalia Faculae within Occator crater, Ceres

Vinalia Faculae within Occator crater, Ceres
Vinalia Faculae within Occator crater, Ceres This view of Vinalia Faculae is mostly a combination of photos Dawn took from as low as 21 miles (34 kilometers) since arriving in its final orbit in June. The bright material is salt (principally sodium carbonate) left behind when briny ice on the ground sublimated. Zoom in for more detail of this mesmerizing part of Occator Crater. We have seen Vinalia Faculae and Occator Crater many times before, most recently in the previous Dawn Journal, and you can see details of Vinalia Faculae below. The spacecraft gets so close to the ground in this orbit that its camera covers only a small area, so multiple orbital passes were required to accumulate all the high-resolution photos used here. When this picture was constructed, Dawn had not yet seen all of Vinalia Faculae from its current orbit, so the missing areas are filled in with the view Dawn had in 2016 from its fourth mapping orbit at an altitude of 240 miles (385 kilometers). Full image and caption. NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI