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Dawn's Lowest Orbit: Near South Pole

Dec. 22, 2015
As seen by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, this part of Ceres, near the south pole, has such long shadows because, from the perspective of this location, the sun is near the horizon.

This view of Ceres, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on December 10, shows an area in southern hemisphere of the dwarf planet. It is located at approximately 85.6 south longitude, 176.6 east longitude.

This part of Ceres, near the south pole, has such long shadows because, from the perspective of this location, the sun is near the horizon. At the time this image was taken, the sun was 4 degrees north of the equator. If you were standing this close to Ceres' south pole, the sun would never get high in the sky during the course of a nine-hour Cerean day.

The spacecraft took this image in its low-altitude mapping orbit from an approximate distance of 240 miles (385 kilometers) from Ceres.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgments, see http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.

For more information about the Dawn mission, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.

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