Dawn data in the PDS Options

[elakdawalla]

Hey folks, Christmas came just a little bit late this year...

http://dawnpub.igpp.ucla.edu

DAWN DATA RELEASE: LEVEL 1A DATA FROM APPROACH AND SURVEY

The Dawn project has created a public website that is available to serve the cruise and Vesta data sets that have been delivered to the Planetary Data System (PDS) while the data are still under review. Data are available from all three Dawn instruments, the Framing Camera (FC), the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIR), and the Gamma Ray and Neutron Detector (GRaND). The data that are currently available are raw data, in engineering units, sometimes referred to as EDRs by the PDS or as NASA level-1a data. Additional data sets will be added when they are submitted to the PDS.

The Dawn website is located at:

http://dawnpub.igpp.ucla.edu

Users of these data should exercise caution. Invariably there will be errors or omissions in the documentation. Please report any problems...

It is a LOT of data. Just the Vesta Approach includes about 2000 FC images! Wow!!!

I think that the first thing I'm going to work on is that approach sequence/movie that I wish I'd had in real time. The rotation of Vesta through the image sequences makes color composition very hard, but I am sure there are people here who are up to it. I hope someone here can come up with a pretty color global shot that I can put into a comparison montage!

[ngunn]

I don't find it surprising. There's water ice almost everywhere except on exposed planetary surfaces. Plenty on Mars, over a wide range of latitudes. The next large objects are the Jovian moons. Only one is non-icy: the rest are mainly ice.

I think all the big asteroids will have a lot of ice, though mostly sub-surface. Apart from ice incorporated when they formed they may also have ice originating from later comet impacts. Visible ice may indicate nothing more than recent exposure.