Thursday, August 11, 2011

An image of asteroid Vesta that was taken by the Dawn spacecraft on July 24, 2011.
NASA / JPL - Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

DAWN Update... The photo above was actually released by NASA last week, but oh well. This image of asteroid Vesta was taken by the Dawn spacecraft on July 24—at a distance of 3,200 miles. The cool video below, which I found on The Planetary Society’s Blog, shows the protoplanet completing a full rotation as Dawn photographed it from orbit. A person named Tayfun Öner modified the movie to smooth out the animation. Check it out.

Dawn is currently orbiting 1,900 miles from Vesta...traveling at a relative speed of 170 mph above the 330-miles-in-diameter asteroid.


Original data: NASA / JPL - Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA. Smoothed out by Tayfun Öner.

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