HAMO and LAMO Images of Octavia Crater
These Dawn framing camera (FC) images of Vesta show Octavia crater at both HAMO (high-altitude mapping orbit) and LAMO (low-altitude mapping orbit) resolutions. The left image is the HAMO image and the right image is the LAMO image. Octavia is the crater on which the LAMO image is positioned. The LAMO image is approximately three times better spatial resolution than the HAMO image. In images with higher spatial resolutions smaller objects can be better distinguished. In the LAMO image the detail of the large slump of material within Octavia can be seen. It looks remarkably like a terrestrial landslide: the rounded end of the landslide, named the toe, is in the left side of the image and a block of slumped material near the beginning of the landslide, named the head, is in the right side of the image. The scarp from which the material originated is the concave area in the HAMO image to the top right of the LAMO box.
These images are located in Vesta's Marcia quadrangle, a few degrees below Vesta's equator. NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained the left image with its framing camera on Oct. 14, 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 63 meters (207 feet) per pixel. This image was acquired during the HAMO (high-altitude mapping orbit) phase of the mission. NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained the right image with its framing camera on Dec. 29, 2011. This image was taken through the camera's clear filter. The distance to the surface of Vesta is 272 kilometers (169 miles) and the image has a resolution of about 19 meters (62 feet) per pixel. This image was acquired during the LAMO (low-altitude mapping orbit) phase of the mission.
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 Dawn is online at http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.