Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Hydrothermal Pits and Domes in Occator Crater, Ceres

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Caption:

The Dawn spacecraft captured these stereo images of Occator Crater on the dwarf planet Ceres in 2018. Framing camera images were used to construct this anaglyph view (which requires red-blue stereo glasses for viewing) of part of the southeastern floor of the crater. This area is approximately 3 miles (5 kilometers) wide and is entirely within the large impact melt deposit formed there during the impact process. The low bright mounds and pits were probably formed by brine that moved to the surface to form surface vents and surface domes during freezing. The spatial resolution of the stereo images is about 11 feet (3.5 meters) per pixel. Occator crater, named after the Roman god of the agricultural practice of harrowing, is about 57 miles (92 kilometers) in diameter.

This image was produced by Dr. Paul Schenk at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Background Info:

The conclusion of Dawn's mission operations was Oct. 31, 2018, when the spacecraft depleted its hydrazine used for attitude control.

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. JPL is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

The Lunar and Planetary Institute is operated by USRA under a cooperative agreement with the Science Mission Directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

For a complete list of Dawn mission participants, visit https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/mission/the-team/partners/ .

For more information about the Dawn mission, visit https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/overview/ .

For more information about the Lunar and Planetary Institute, visit https://www.lpi.usra.edu .

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