[meteorite-list] Dawn Creates Guide to Vesta's Hidden Attractions

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 08:40:39 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201312171640.rBHGedeB003207_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-367

Dawn Creates Guide to Vesta's Hidden Attractions
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
December 16, 2013

Some beauty is revealed only at a second glance. When viewed with the
human eye, the giant asteroid Vesta, which was the object of scrutiny by
the Dawn spacecraft from 2011 to 2012, is quite unspectacular
color-wise. Vesta looks grayish, pitted by a variety of large and small
craters.

But scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in
Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, have re-analyzed the images of this giant
asteroid obtained by Dawn's framing camera. They assigned colors to
different wavelengths of light and, in the process, revealed in
unprecedented detail not only geological structures that are invisible
to the naked eye, but also landscapes of incomparable beauty.

Researchers at Max Planck can now see structures such as melts from
impacts, craters buried by quakes and foreign material brought by space
rocks, visible with a resolution of 200 feet (60 meters) per pixel.

"The key to these images is the seven color filters of the camera system
on board the spacecraft," said Andreas Nathues, the framing camera team
lead at Max Planck. Since different minerals reflect light of different
wavelengths to different degrees, the filters help reveal compositional
differences that remain hidden without them. In addition, scientists
calibrated the data so that the finest variations in brightness can be
seen.

In the new colorized images, different colors indicate different
materials on the surface of Vesta. They reveal impressive formations and
a wide range of geological diversity, said Nathues. But above all, the
color-coded images are impressive because of their beauty.

"No artist could paint something like that. Only nature can do this,"
said Martin Hoffman, a member of the framing camera team also at Max
Planck. Pictures of the crater Aelia, the crater Antonia and an area
near the crater Sextilia show some of Vesta's most impressive sites.

Dawn visited Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. The spacecraft is
currently on its way to its second destination, the dwarf planet Ceres.
Ceres is the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and
Jupiter.

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.

More information on Dawn is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook at jpl.nasa.gov

Birgit Krummheuer +49 5556-979-462
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany
presse at mps.mpg.de

2013-367
Received on Tue 17 Dec 2013 11:40:39 AM PST