PIA19185: Bright Spot on Ceres Has Dimmer Companion


Bright Spot on Ceres Has Dimmer Companion

Caption:

This image was taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft of dwarf planet Ceres on Feb. 19 from a distance of nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers). It shows that the brightest spot on Ceres has a dimmer companion, which apparently lies in the same basin.

Background Info:

Dawn is due to be captured into orbit around Ceres on March 6.

Dawn's mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, 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. The University of California, Los Angeles, 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 acknowledgments, visit http://www.nasa.gov/dawn .

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 Grayscale
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2015-02-25
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19185
Identifier PIA19185