PIA11240: Occator and Ahuna


Occator and Ahuna

Caption:

Occator Crater and Ahuna Mons appear together in this view obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on February 11, 2017.

Ahuna Mons, on the limb at right, is a mountain 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) tall. Occator hosts the mysterious "bright spots" (called faculae) that were revealed by Dawn to be evaporite deposits (see PIA21078 ). Both features are relatively young, share a similar composition -- different from Ceres' average composition -- and hint at recent internal activity in the dwarf planet.

Dawn took this image during its third extended-mission science orbit (XMO3), from a distance of about 4,700 miles (7,500 kilometers) above the surface of Ceres. The image resolution is about 2,300 feet (700 meters) per pixel.

Background Info:

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. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, see http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission .

For more information about the Dawn mission, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target 1 Ceres
System Main Belt
Target Type Dwarf Planet Asteroid
Mission Dawn
Instrument Host Dawn
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Framing Camera (FC)
Detector
Extra Keywords Crater, Grayscale, Mountain
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2017-02-25
Date in Caption 2017-02-11
Image Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11240
Identifier PIA11240