[meteorite-list] NASA's Dawn Collects a Bounty of Beauty from Vesta

From: Michael Murray <mikebevmurray_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:37:41 -0600
Message-ID: <60B0F58B-034A-490E-94B1-5B5489F343F8_at_gmail.com>

The video they have up is fantastic.
Mike in CO
On Sep 16, 2011, at 3:03 PM, Ron Baalke wrote:

>
> http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-293
>
> NASA's Dawn Collects a Bounty of Beauty from Vesta
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory
> September 16, 2011
>
> PASADENA, Calif. - A new video from NASA's Dawn spacecraft takes us
> on a
> flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.
>
> The data obtained by Dawn's framing camera, used to produce the
> visualizations, will help scientists determine the processes that
> formed
> Vesta's striking features. It will also help Dawn mission fans all
> over
> the world visualize this mysterious world, which is the second most
> massive object in the main asteroid belt.
>
> The video, which shows Vesta as seen from Dawn's perspective, can be
> viewed at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=1020.
>
> You'll notice in the video that Vesta is not entirely lit up. There is
> no light in the high northern latitudes because, like Earth, Vesta has
> seasons. Currently it is northern winter on Vesta, and the northern
> polar region is in perpetual darkness. When we view Vesta's rotation
> from above the south pole, half is in darkness simply because half of
> Vesta is in daylight and half is in the darkness of night .
>
> Another distinct feature seen in the video is a massive circular
> structure in the south pole region. Scientists were particularly eager
> to see this area close-up, since NASA's Hubble Space Telescope first
> detected it years ago. The circular structure, or depression, is
> several
> hundreds of miles, or kilometers, wide, with cliffs that are also
> several miles high. One impressive mountain in the center of the
> depression rises approximately 9 miles (15 kilometers) above the
> base of
> this depression, making it one of the highest elevations on all known
> bodies with solid surfaces in the solar system.
>
> The collection of images, obtained when Dawn was about 1,700 miles
> (2,700 kilometers) above Vesta's surface, was used to determine its
> rotational axis and a system of latitude and longitude coordinates.
> One
> of the first tasks tackled by the Dawn science team was to determine
> the
> precise orientation of Vesta's rotation axis relative to the celestial
> sphere.
>
> The zero-longitude, or prime meridian, of Vesta was defined by the
> science team using a tiny crater about 1,640 feet (500 meters) in
> diameter, which they named "Claudia," after a Roman woman during the
> second century B.C. Dawn's craters will be named after the vestal
> virgins-the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, and famous Roman women,
> while other features will be named for festivals and towns of that
> era.
>
> 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. Dawn
> is a
> project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's
> Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible
> for
> overall Dawn mission science. Other scientific partners include
> Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.; Max Planck Institute for
> Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany; DLR Institute for
> Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany; Italian National Institute for
> Astrophysics, Rome; and the Italian Space Agency, Rome. Orbital
> Sciences
> Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.
>
> For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and
> http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .
>
> You can also follow the mission on Twitter at:
> http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn .
>
> Priscilla Vega 818-354-1357
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
> priscilla.r.vega at jpl.nasa.gov
>
> 2011-293
>
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Received on Fri 16 Sep 2011 07:37:41 PM PDT