JavaScript is required
JPL Logo
Image

Apparent Brightness and Topography Images of Vibidia Crater

March 9, 2012
The left-hand image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the apparent brightness of asteroid Vesta's surface. The right-hand image is based on this apparent brightness image, with a color-coded height representation of the topography overlain onto it.

The left-hand image is a Dawn FC (framing camera) image, which shows the apparent brightness of Vesta's surface. The right-hand image is based on this apparent brightness image, with a color-coded height representation of the topography overlain onto it. The topography is calculated from a set of images that were observed from different viewing directions, which allows stereo reconstruction. The various colors correspond to the height of the area. The white and red areas in the topography image are the highest areas and the blue areas are the lowest areas. These images are centered on Vibidia crater, which has been named recently. It is clear from the topography image that Vibidia crater hit a sloped region of Vesta, which is higher at the top of the image and lower at the bottom.

These images are located in Vesta's Tuccia quadrangle and the center of the images is 26.6 degrees south latitude, 220.4 degrees east longitude. NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained the apparent brightness image with its framing camera on Oct. 21, 2011. This image was taken through the camera's clear filter. The distance to the surface of Vesta is 700 kilometers (435 miles) and the image has a resolution of about 70 meters (230 feet) per pixel. This image was acquired during the HAMO (high-altitude mapping orbit) phase of the mission. These images are lambert-azimuthal map projected.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington D.C. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The Framing Camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.

More information about the Dawn mission is online at http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Keep Exploring