Apparent Brightness and Topography Images of Sossia and Canuleia Craters

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Caption:

The left-hand image is a Dawn FC (framing camera) image, which shows the apparent brightness of Vesta's surface. The right-hand image is based on this apparent brightness image, which has had a color-coded height representation of the topography overlain onto it. The topography is calculated from a set of images that were observed from different viewing directions, which allows stereo reconstruction. The various colors correspond to the height of the area. The white and red areas in the topography image are the highest areas and the blue areas are the lowest areas. Canuleia crater is in the bottom right side of the image and is surrounded by bright material. Sossia crater is in the bottom left side of the image and has mostly dark material associated with it. Rays of bright material surround Canuleia crater and rays of dark material extend from the top part of Sossia crater. There is also some dark material associated with Canuleia crater; there is some around the crater's rim and a long, dark band extends from the left side of the crater. The bright material around Canuleia crater is topographically high compared to the low region in which the dark band is located.

These images are located in Vesta's Urbinia quadrangle, in Vesta's southern hemisphere. NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained the apparent image with its framing camera on Oct. 25, 2011. This image was taken through the camera's clear filter. The distance to the surface of Vesta is 700 kilometers (435 miles) and the image has a resolution of about 70 meters (230 feet) per pixel. This image was acquired during the HAMO (high-altitude mapping orbit) phase of the mission. These images are lambert-azimuthal map projected.

Background Info:

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 D.C. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras have been 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/JPL.

More information about Dawn is online at http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .

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