The European Space Agency have released the latest imagery from the Dawn spacecraft, showing Ceres at a resolution just below the Hubble at this moment in time.
The awesome images, taken on the 13 January, have been put together in a neat animation, as you can see above.
Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt. It is composed of rock and ice, and is about 970 kilometres in diameter. Using these latest images and the images previously taken by Hubble, some distinct areas on Ceres’ surface are beginning to emerge. Of particular note is the white patch, towards the top-left of the image and the darker band just below the middle of the image. Both will be seen in more detail as Dawn gets ever closer to the dwarf planet.
Images from Dawn will exceed the Hubble Space Telescope’s on the 26 January. From then on, images will simply become clearer and clearer. Dawn will eventually orbit Ceres at an altitude of just a few hundred kilometres over the surface, allowing high resolution images to be taken and discoveries to be made.
The awesome images, taken on the 13 January, have been put together in a neat animation, as you can see above.
Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt. It is composed of rock and ice, and is about 970 kilometres in diameter. Using these latest images and the images previously taken by Hubble, some distinct areas on Ceres’ surface are beginning to emerge. Of particular note is the white patch, towards the top-left of the image and the darker band just below the middle of the image. Both will be seen in more detail as Dawn gets ever closer to the dwarf planet.
Images from Dawn will exceed the Hubble Space Telescope’s on the 26 January. From then on, images will simply become clearer and clearer. Dawn will eventually orbit Ceres at an altitude of just a few hundred kilometres over the surface, allowing high resolution images to be taken and discoveries to be made.