PASADENA, Calif. -- These Dawn FC (framing camera) images show
the central area of the south polar basin. The mountain/ central complex
is the roughly circular feature in the center of the image. There are
grooves, scarps and hummocky (eg. wavy/ undulating) terrane around and
on this feature. The left image is an albedo image, which is taken
directly through the clear filter of the FC. Such an image shows the
albedo (eg. brightness/ darkness) of the surface. The right image uses
the same albedo image as its base but then a color-coded height
representation of the topography is overlain onto it. The various colors
correspond to the height of the area that they color. For example, the
white and red on the top edge of the right image is the highest area and
the blue areas in the bottom of the image is the lowest. This
color-coding shows the topography of the region well: the mountain/
central complex (colored green and yellow) is higher than the roughly
circular depression surrounding it (colored blue and green), which is
all lower than the red and white region in the top of the image. The
topography is calculated from a set of images that were observed from
different viewing directions, these are called stereo images.
NASA’s
Dawn spacecraft obtained the albedo image with its framing camera on
August 11, 2011. This image was taken through the camera’s clear filter.
The distance to the surface of Vesta is 2740 km the image has a
resolution of about 250 meters per pixel. The images are projected using
a lambert-azimuthal map projection.
Image Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA
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