Distribution of Vesta's Dark Materials, Southern View

This map shows the distribution of dark materials throughout the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta. The circles, diamonds, and stars show where the dark material appears in craters, spots and topographic highs. The dashed line depicts the rim of the Veneneia basin, the black line the rim of the younger Rheasilvia basin.

The red and white indicate high topography and blue and violet indicate low topography.

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. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras were 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.