Planetary Society logo
  • “Exploration is in our nature.” - Carl Sagan

Water ice in Oxo Crater

Water ice in Oxo Crater
Water ice in Oxo Crater This shows where Dawn’s infrared mapping spectrometer detected water ice in Oxo Crater. The crater is 6 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter. This view was constructed from bonus photographs Dawn took from an altitude of 240 miles (385 kilometers). Blue, green and infrared pictures were combined with stereo pictures to provide this perspective. (Colors are enhanced to bring out subtle differences your eye would not otherwise detect, and the vertical scale has been exaggerated by a factor of two.) Compare this with the Oxo Crater photograph shown in the April Dawn Journal. Here, we are looking from the upper left of that photo toward the lower right. Full image and caption. NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA