Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Hydrothermal Deposits at Occator Crater, Ceres
The Dawn spacecraft captured these stereo images of Occator Crater on the dwarf planet Ceres in 2018. This view is part of a mosaic of about 50 framing camera images used to construct this anaglyph view (which requires red-blue stereo glasses for viewing) of part of the eastern floor of the crater. This area is approximately 5 miles (8.5 kilometers) wide and features bright carbonate deposits of the Vinalia Faculae formation on top of the ropey textured lobate floor impact melt deposit. Stereo views of Vinalia Faculae illustrate the complex relationship between the thin carbonates and the underlying impact deposits. The spatial resolution of the stereo images is about 11 feet (3.5 meters) per pixel. Occator crater, named after the Roman god of the agricultural practice of harrowing, is about 57 miles (92 kilometers) in diameter.
The conclusion of Dawn's mission operations was Oct. 31, 2018, when the spacecraft depleted its hydrazine used for attitude control.
This image was produced by Dr. Paul Schenk at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
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. JPL is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.
The Lunar and Planetary Institute is operated by USRA under a cooperative agreement with the Science Mission Directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
For a complete list of Dawn mission participants, visit https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/mission/the-team/partners/.
For more information about the Dawn mission, visit https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/overview/.
For more information about the Lunar and Planetary Institute, visit https://www.lpi.usra.edu.