Dawn's looping round the north side now, so the 'where is Dawn' page is showing an illuminated crescent:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/orbits/fullview4.jpg

(presumably that links to the current image, when you link to it, not the version I am looking at now)

Enough of the surface is visible to see that the texture map currently in use is really from Tethys! Penelope and the chain of craters to its west are visible right now.

Phil

Funny, and well spotted! I've attached the current screenshot, since it will have changed by the time some people here look at it.

Here's a crater - middle of this view - with dark markings inside and outside its rim. Other distant images show at least one other dark spot like this as well.

Phil

It looks like maybe a fresh impact inside an older crater.

I'd say excavation of dark subsurface material.

Phil

I'm curious if MYSTIC simulator use real data to create the image of Vesta ? Is this a true picture of Vesta? If it corresponds to reality, it is very interesting.

Ion engine is not operating from a few hours, I hope that the framing camera just works.

As Phil pointed out yesterday, that's Tethys.

If our images of Vesta were already that good, we'd have no need of a Dawn mission...

Tried to line up the IR image with this view. If I got it right, that crater is right in the middle of a "greenish" splatty zone. This is the same tint as the sharp scarp face. There are two other greenish splatty zones below the central peak in the image, but I'm almost positive this area is misregistered. I'm going to run with the idea that the green tint indicates fresher material.

BTW, here's the blink animation between the original black and white image, and the manually warped IR image:



[animated GIF: Click to animate]

As your rough map is rather disorted it would be interesting to see a south polar view, probably with a grid.
For sure that is only a approximate but a nice overview showing locations of major features

In the last hours, Dawn turned off it's engines and distance/speed are quite stable; this could means he reached a circular orbit but, looking to the plots below, actual speed/energy are below such a level, suggesting that probe is near the apoapsis of an elongated orbit:

Indeed, current orbit should be almost circular (5500x5200 km, e=0,028) with a 161 hours period. Obviously, this is true until next (imminent) engine burn, which should be in direction roughly opposite to orbital motion in order to have a progressive distance reduction, spiraling toward survey orbit...

Note: In all my figures, I am assuming that distance declared in the simulator is measured from Vesta's centre...

"it would be interesting to see a south polar view, probably with a grid."

For the time being I will not do this. Better to leave it to the Dawn team to do a proper one. Think of my map as just a guide to image coverage at the moment. For one thing, the latitude scaling is very uncertain.


Meanwhile Dawn has looped over the north pole, and then the equator over the weekend, and it's now back over the south pole.

Phil

Next Monday on NASA TV:

Goody goody