• New Ceres Images Show Bright Craters

    From baalke@1:2320/100 to sci.space.news on Tue Apr 19 23:37:24 2016
    From Newsgroup: sci.space.news

    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2016-106

    New Ceres Images Show Bright Craters
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory
    April 19, 2016

    [Image]
    Ceres' Haulani Crater, with a diameter of 21 miles (34 kilometers), shows evidence of landslides from its crater rim. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

    Craters with bright material on dwarf planet Ceres shine in new images
    from NASA's Dawn mission.

    In its lowest-altitude mapping orbit, at a distance of 240 miles (385 kilometers) from Ceres, Dawn has provided scientists with spectacular
    views of the dwarf planet.

    Haulani Crater, with a diameter of 21 miles (34 kilometers), shows evidence
    of landslides from its crater rim. Smooth material and a central ridge
    stand out on its floor. An enhanced false-color view allows scientists
    to gain insight into materials and how they relate to surface morphology.
    This image shows rays of bluish ejected material. The color blue in such
    views has been associated with young features on Ceres.

    "Haulani perfectly displays the properties we would expect from a fresh
    impact into the surface of Ceres. The crater floor is largely free of
    impacts, and it contrasts sharply in color from older parts of the surface," said Martin Hoffmann, co-investigator on the Dawn framing camera team,
    based at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, G||ttingen, Germany.

    The crater's polygonal nature (meaning it resembles a shape made of straight lines) is noteworthy because most craters seen on other planetary bodies, including Earth, are nearly circular. The straight edges of some Cerean craters, including Haulani, result from pre-existing stress patterns and faults beneath the surface.

    A hidden treasure on Ceres is the 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) Oxo
    Crater, which is the second-brightest feature on Ceres (only Occator's
    central area is brighter). Oxo lies near the 0 degree meridian that defines the edge of many Ceres maps, making this small feature easy to overlook.
    Oxo is also unique because of the relatively large "slump" in its crater
    rim, where a mass of material has dropped below the surface. Dawn science
    team members are also examining the signatures of minerals on the crater floor, which appear different than elsewhere on Ceres.

    "Little Oxo may be poised to make a big contribution to understanding
    the upper crust of Ceres," said Chris Russell, principal investigator
    of the mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles.

    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, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space
    Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit:

    http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

    More information about Dawn is available at the following sites:

    http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov
    http://www.nasa.gov/dawn


    News Media Contact

    Elizabeth Landau
    NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
    818-354-6425
    Elizabeth.Landau@jpl.nasa.gov

    2016-106

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